The Truth According to Us

June 8, 2015
Barrows (co-author of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society) turns her attention to a small town in West Virginia during the Great Depression. Macedonia is the kind of town where everyone knows everyone else's business. Into this insular environment comes a beautiful young outsider, Layla, who's been commissioned by the Federal Writers' Project to write a history of the town upon its sesquicentennial. She boards with the Romeyn family, formerly one of Macedonia's "first families," whose fortunes have fallen after a series of scandals, including a deadly fire at the hosiery factory the family once managed. Layla befriends reluctant spinster Jottie Romeyn, but Jottie's 12-year-old niece, Willa, deeply distrusts Layla's intentions toward Willa's dashing and often-absent divorced father, Felix. Told through a combination of letters and overlapping narratives primarily from Jottie, Willa, and Layla's points of view, the novel is also padded unnecessarily by numerous flashbacks and whole sections from Layla's work in progress. Some characters (such as Jottie's eccentric twin sisters) fail to live up to their initial promise; some plot points are developed and then dropped abruptly. Nevertheless, Barrows does capture the interior life of her primary characters in this portrait of a town on the border between the past and present, as well as North and South.

April 15, 2015

In 1938 Layla Beck is sent from her posh Washington, DC, home to the tiny town of Macedonia, WV. Her father, a U.S. senator, has gotten her a job on the Federal Writers Project as punishment for refusing to marry the wealthy boy of his choosing. Expecting the task of penning the town's history to be a crashing bore, Layla rents a room in the home of the quirky Romeyn family and proceeds to gather data via interviews with Macedonia's founding families. Each interview presents a slightly different view of the community, its founder, and the somewhat scandalous events that have shaped its history. Moreover, her research touches a spark to the smoldering secrets of the Romeyns and sucks her into the vortex of their long-standing conflicts. What looked to be a dull summer turns out to be filled with drama and an astonishing cast of characters who change Layla's life forever. VERDICT Barrows, coauthor of the best-selling The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, hits the mark again with this delightful yet at times heart-wrenching story of life in a Depression-ridden small town. Fans of the first book will find parallels in this novel's blend of narrative and epistolary chapters. A warmhearted Southern charmer that is sure to captivate readers who enjoyed Rachel Joyce's The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Guernsey, and Gabrielle Zevin's The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry. [See Prepub Alert, 3/5/15; ten-city tour; library marketing.]--Susan Clifford Braun, Bainbridge Island, WA

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