the title suggests, the characters in this book are delving into secrets to find out the truthand there may be more than one truth.
The narrator is twelveyearold Willa Romeyn, a likable, precocious girl in the small West Virginian town of Macedonia, She has been eavesdropping on conversations, and sneaking around trying to find out the truth about her father Felix's occupation, family secrets, and life in general.
Another truthseeker is Layla, a young woman boarding with the Romeyns who is writing a history of Macedonia for the Federal Writers Project, a program that helped unemployed writers and photographers during the Great Depression.
She's interviewing the townspeople where she gets both the official version of history, and the colorful stories that will make a better book.
Layla's letters to her friends and family about her experiences are lively and fun,
The Romeyn household is run by Jottie, Felix's sister, who is a delightful maternal woman, The man she loved died in a mill fire inand finding the truth behind the tragedy helps drive the plot.
Felix Romeyn is a charming womanizer who mysteriously comes and goes with his job,
Author Annie Barrows makes us feel that we are inWest Virginia, and the sense of time and place is a strength of the book.
Mill workers are being laid off during the hard times of the Depression, and the men want to unionize, Although Prohibition is the law, even young Willa starts learning the truth about bootleggers, It shows small town life with its warmth and its sniping,
The book gets off to a slow start, but gets more entertaining, so be patient, The story has a large number of characters, some of whom have little bearing on the plot, The novel has a lot going onplot elements set in bothand, Layla's letters, and excerpts from Layla's book about Macedonia.
Some of the secrets ofcontinue to haunt the Romeyn family in, So if you're up for a heartwarming, but slowmoving, Southern family story, then this is the book for you,.stars. I thought I should revise this review since I wrote it nearly three years ago, when all I could think of to write, at the time, was just how much I loved it.
So, yes, I loved this book, I loved the story. I loved the characters. I loved the wit and humor, and I loved the audio/readers, I also love epistolary novels and much of the story is revealed in letters, Listening to this book was like being dropped right into anytown, in nowheresville, America smack in the midst of the depression, and I could see, hear, feel, and smell the ambience.
The deterioration was evident and poverty supplanted the comfort once enjoyed by a town whose main source of jobs and income had gone up in flames when the local sock/stocking factory burned down I read this so long ago that I might have gotten some of that wrong.
Enter Layla the willful daughter of a Senator who does not agree to marry her fathers choice of groom.
Laylas refusal to obey her father, angers the Senator and he decides to teach his daughter a lesson in life by sending her off to make a living of her own, setting her up with a job and modest lodging in the once grand home of the Romeyn family in Macedonia, W.
Virginia. She is to work for the Writers Project under the New Deal Program c,. Her job will be to write the history of Macedonia and the prominent founding families,
Layla causes quite a stir in this conservative little town, where she does learn a few life lessons.
There is a lot of romance to this novel and a climatic coming of age both for Layla and Willa, who narrates much of the story through heryear old eyes.
Willas mother left her and her father when she was a little girl, Her father is somewhat of a snake oil salesman who disappears for long periods, bringing in money from questionable enterprises.
Willa lives with her Aunt Jottie in the Romeyn family manor, There are plenty of secrets and lost years of happiness in this book, and there are some thrilling scenes toward the end.
I fell on this book after falling in love with The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society", read by Juliette Mills, which was an alltime favorite of mine.
If Juliette Mills read a telephone book, I would probably give the audiojust because it was read by JM.
I WANTED MORE from this author, Mary Anne Shaffer, but I soon learned that she had passed away before finishing the book her only book.
Shaffers niece, Annie Barrows, finished the book for her, Barrows is a prolific writer of popular childrens books including the beloved Ivy and Bean series, and, lo and behold! I found that in, Barrows wrote The Truth.
And yes, after reading this, I WANTED MORE. I even wrote to Ms, Barrows in Septemberasking if she planned on writing any more books for adults and she replied that she was working on two manuscripts for grownup humans.
Alas sigh!, I am still waiting Annie Barrows, Please come back soon. The Truth According to Us by Annie Barrows
In, wealthy, twenty four year old Layla Beck is punished by her father, for not marrying a man she didn't even like, and is sent to work on the Federal Writers Project, a New Deal jobs program.
Yes, wealthy Layla, daughter of a Senator, is going to be living on relief, Layla is naive, spoiled and has never worked a day in her life, But once she starts boarding with the Romeyn family, of Macedonia, West Virginia, she gets her revenge on her father by falling for Felix Romeyn and enjoying her exile, in ways she never expected could happen.
Felix is divorced and his two daughters, twelve year old Willa and nine year old Birdie, are mostly raised by his sister, Jottie.
Felix and Jottie's twin sisters, Mae and Minerva, live with them, during the week, when they aren't with their husbands on weekends.
This is a very close family, full of secrets and things they won't say, Precocious Willa makes this story for me, with her determination to learn all the secrets, everyone's secrets, She knows her father is popular and all the women flock to him but no one will tell her what he does for a living except to vaguely mention that he deals in chemicals.
Felix always seems to be up to no good and if he's a bootlegger than Willa wants to bootleg, too.
I enjoyed getting lost in this town and this family although I had very strong likes and dislikes concerning the characters.
For most of the book, Layla was on my dislike list, despite her funny, biting letters to those who put her in her relief job.
She was so naive and saw only what she wanted to see, even when Jottie tried to open her eyes to the real character of Felix.
Yes, just like all the other women, Layla falls for Felix with a sickening thud, Willa loves her father with blind adoration and hates Layla to the point of wishing her dead,
But during Willa's spying to find the answers to her family's dark past and buried secrets, she finds out some things that blow up the surface peacefulness of her family.
What she discovers concerns Jottie's one love, dead for almost two decades, and Felix's claims about what happened to her love.
This family may love each other but the love isn't a safe love or a healthy love, Felix and Jottie are tied together in ways that only hurt Jottie and allow Felix to lord over her, claiming to be her only friend.
I enjoyed the story about the times, the town, and the people but I was left feeling sad for the things that don't really change by the end of the story.
I feel that dysfunction continues for Felix and Jottie and that saddens me, But still, I enjoyed Willa and her rude little sister, Birdie so much and will miss this town and the characters, now that the story is over.
Published June,I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review,
This was a strange read, one that I both liked, but less than I had hoped and expected.
To be honest, I found the book a wee bit too long, Somehow, it felt like it could've been tightened, and although the last chapters, after the "reveal", were needed, they still seemed to drag a little.
The style here mixes present tense first person narrative, past tense third person narrative, and excerpts from letters.
I liked the tone of those, especially Layla's, as they were witty, and at the same time revealed her lack of experience in other circumstances than those she had grown up in.
I'm not sure what to make of the past/present/POV choiceas usual, I've seen this technique used more and more in the past few years, and I can never tell if it's a good idea or if it irks me.
Both, I suppose. Here, I was more bothered when the third person narrative jumped from one character to another within the span of a couple of paragraphs.
Macedonia had the charms of a little town in summer, with its quirky people, its own unspoken rules, its skeletons in the closet, whether in the past the soldiers who spend the night in the house of a lady.
. . of the evening, or the general who was actually crazy enough to shoot his own son or in the present what happened to Vause, Felix's actual occupation.
I found myself wanting to discover more about its history as seen through the eyes of its inhabitants,
Layla didn't strike me as particularly interesting, yet turned out better than I thought, at least, proving to others and to herself that she could be more than a future trophy wife, and that she wasn't so stupidonly sheltered.
While she didn't approach her task as a historian in the most objective manner, which is impossible anyway as history is never objective, she still did it with the intent of writing about Macedonia's past in an interesting way.
What I didn't like was the emotional part of her involvement when it came to a specific character, as it was so painfully obvious that she was being played.
. . and after that, unfortunately, she kind of fell flat,
Other characters I found annoying on a regular basis, and it seemed that mostly nobody knew what they really wanted.
Not unexpected I don't know what I want in life, after all!, but annoying after a while, I still don't know if everybody was completely selfish reflections of how bleak human nature is, stupid, full of love, lying to themselves, hiding their inner pain, wanting only what others had.
. . All of that, I guess On the one hand, it was interesting, showing that the "idyllic little southern town" was all but.
On the other hand, characters like Jottie constantly made me think "can't you be happy with one choice in your life, for
a change" Basically, she denied herself foryears, then when she finally chose for herself, it was "too easy", thus worthless.
I wouldn't callyears "too easy", but maybe that's just me,
I would have liked to see more events unfold from Willa's point of view, She had both a ruthless and childish take on things, which fitted heryearold self, balancing between carefree childhood and wanting the grownups to see her as an equal, someone they'd confide into.
As they obviously wouldn't, she tried to discover things by herselfand got more than her money's worth in that regard.
I didn't really like how she reacted in the end, as it made her part of the narrative less involved.
Conclusion: Interesting background Macedonia, the WPA, the strike, but not so interesting for me when it came to the characters, who were a little too predictable and also annoying.
.stars. .