The Rain Barrel Baby

June M. Blurton is a retired speech/language pathologist.

Already abused by a mentally-ill mother, Ivy is gang-raped by a group of
teenagers in Winnipeg in the 1960s. She leaves home, slowly changes
herself into a glamorous, wealthy woman, and 30 years later is in a
position to seek revenge. In this she receives advice from hallucinatory
voices.

Frank, one of the young men who did nothing to stop the rape, is now a
respectable police officer. He has problems of his own, including an
alcoholic wife and young children, but he puts them and his knitting
aside long enough to solve the mystery of a dead baby found in his
neighbor’s rain barrel.

Frank does his job by following his hunches rather than by engaging in
detective work, so the reader is not involved in following clues. Most
of the characters do not evoke empathy, and the dialogue is stilted.
While the story itself is a viable one, the way in which it is told does
not make the best of its potential.