The term “novelization” has, over the past decade or so, taken its place in the vocabulary of late 20th century pseudo-literary terminology. It refers to those books that retell the story of a Hollywood movie. In other words, novelizations are narratives that come after the primary spectacle.

A Dry Spell, by Manitoulin Island, Ontario author Susie Moloney, adds a new twist to this relationship between publishing and movie making by reading as a novelization without the movie having been made. Mind you, the rights have already been sold to Hollywood, and A Dry Spell has been given a $350,000 (U.S.) promotional budget.

While effective writing in this genre can be both thrilling and fun, A Dry Spell is neither. One hears the stilted dialogue and visualizes the soft-focus close-ups and overblown crane shots built into the writing, so that in the end, the experience is that of watching a movie trailer that goes on for several hours.

Goodlands, North Dakota, is in its fourth year of drought. Farms are being foreclosed, domestic violence is on the increase, and the locals are in a collectively lousy mood. Enter Tom Keatley (casting suggestion: Tom Cruise), an Americanized shaman whose trick is the unique ability to make it rain by holding his hands up to the sky and getting worked up. He’s been summoned to Goodlands by the beleaguered bank manager, Karen Grange (someone spunky, maybe Sandra Bullock) in order to bring the drought to an end. Trouble is, for some ominous reason, Tom can’t make it rain in Goodlands. His concern over his inability to initiate precipitation works as a metaphorical joke of anticipated middle-aged impotence.

The evil at work in Goodlands has it out for our heroes, of course, who have by now fallen in love in the roundabout, lonely prairie manner of the Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep characters in that other pre-cinematic novelization, The Bridges of Madison County. When the source of this malice is revealed, however, it makes the giant spider from outer space that lives in the sewer system in Stephen King’s It seem compelling and plausible. Needless to say, the climax involves an epic contest between good and evil that will provide another lucrative contract for the animation division at Industrial Light & Magic.