How does the author use figurative language in the novel, Taking Terri Mueller?

Figurative language is used throughout the novel. Terri's mother, for example, told her that as a child she was "like a rubber ball, that nothing could keep her down."

The author also uses personification: "questions were blowing through her mind like a windstorm." Words were "pouring like water like gray rain falling in straight sheets out of the sky."