Exit The Rainmaker

New York: Atheneum [Macmillan Publishing Company], 1989. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Thomas Victor (Author photograph). [12], 401, [3] pages. The dust jacket is in a plastic sleeve. Signed and dated by the author on the half-title page, which reads "Jonathan Coleman Sept. 8, 1990". The story of a well-known college president in Southern Maryland, who left his wife, work, and friends to commit what some would regard as a courageous--others as outrageous--act. Jonathan Coleman (born 1951) is an American author of literary nonfiction. Jonathan Coleman worked as a book editor with Knopf and Simon & Schuster. In 1980, in a piece about publishing, he was profiled in Time magazine as one of the best editors in the field. In 1981, Coleman was a producer and correspondent with CBS News. In 1986, Coleman began teaching literary nonfiction writing at the University of Virginia through 1993. He lectures at universities throughout the country. Coleman's books—three of which have been New York Times bestsellers—have included Exit the Rainmaker (1989), the story of Jay Carsey, a college president who abruptly abandoned his marriage and career and disappeared, a book the Los Angeles Times Book Review called "A fascinating, symbolic statement of the American psyche". John Nance Carsey actually disappeared twice and died in part of alcholism at the age of 65 while residing and teaching in Florida. Jonathan Coleman wrote "Jay was the sort of person that even if you knew all this about him, he would walk into a room, and in 10 or 15 minutes you would be enjoying him enormously," said Coleman, who remained an acquaintance of Dr. Carsey's until his death. Derived from a Kirkus review: Here, Coleman, author of the best-selling true-crimer At Mother's Request, makes a psychological Everyman out of Jay Carsey, a college president and pillar of Maryland society who suddenly walked out on his own life. On May 19, 1982, 47-year-old Jay Carsey disappeared from Green's Inheritance, the historic Georgian house his wife had made into a social focal point in Charles County, MD. President of the local community college, a highly paid engineering consultant for the Navy, Carsey was so likable and socially outgoing that everyone in genteel, southern Maryland seemed to think of him as a friend. Yet, instead of going to the office that morning, friendly "Uncle Jay" wrote a few terse notes to his wife and his friends and took off--shedding his identity like snakeskin. "Exit the Rainmaker" was all he wrote to the assistant dean of the college, a rueful reference to a college play he starred in--as a charismatic stranger who convinced a small town he could make rain. Coleman delves into Carsey's background and character, revealing a man so defined by pleasing others--by being the fair-haired "rainmaker"--that he had virtually no inner life. Interviewing Carsey's father in Texas, Coleman reveals that Carsey was raised to prize intellect over emotion, forsaking "impractical" interests like music and journalism. He focused on what looked good to others all his life--making the college a success, marrying a striking, gregarious wife. In the end, he had nothing but alcohol. Finally, Coleman picks up Carsey's trail in a new bohemian life in El Paso--battered by his journey underground and just a bit closer to the elusive truth of his real identity. A solidly written psychological chronicle of a man who lives the fantasy of striking out for the great unknown--only it turns out to be a desert. Well done, and likely to be popular. From a Publishers Weekly article: In 1982 Jay Carsey, age 47, president of a community college in Maryland, vanished, walking away not only from his job and 14-year marriage but from a seemingly enviable life. He left behind a couple of letters that offered no real explanation for his action. In a book as spellbinding as a first-rate whodunit, the author of At Mother's Request seeks reasons for this mystifying behavior. Carsey emerges as an alcoholic manipulator, trapped in a puffed-up self-image as father-figure and humanitarian, and plagued by deep-rooted feelings of fraudulence. We learn of traumas in Carsey's Texas boyhood, his entry into Maryland's nouveau riche society, the hollowness at the core of his outwardly near-perfect marriage. Coleman relates how Carsey planned his escape, and traces his moves during his new existence. Equally engrossing are Carsey's own Pirandellian interpretation of the flight and accounts by others in the drama, revealed after Carsey's cover was blown and the case became national news. The book, with its implication that the ``fantasy of wanting out'' is not uncommon, is disquieting.