Rain on iron rooftops. A radio streaming the latest hit songs. It’s the early 1950s. The baby boom. Valerie is a talkative, singing, slanging, pregnant daughter of the slums. Gilbert, her husband, is the well-spoken son of a landed family. They already have three kids. Gilbert has just taken a job as paymaster at a coal mine. The family is about to start life in a green and black and red township on the West Coast.
A little boy is born, almost in a taxi, and named Stevan.
Green Grey Rain tells the story of the first years of that little boy. A story told by Stevan. A story told too by the hit songs he hears on the radio. And a story told by Valerie – who, with her sister, has already spoken to us in the pages of Oracles and Miracles. A story of working and playing, dreaming and singing, crying and laughing, hoping and wishing, bush, rain, rust, and the sooty streets of Blackball.