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Annie Barrows once again evokes the charm and eccentricity of a small town filled with extraordinary characters. Her new novel, The Truth According to Us, brings to life an inquisitive young girl, her beloved aunt, and the alluring visitor who changes the course of their destiny forever.
In the summer of 1938, Layla Beck’s father, a United States senator, cuts off her allowance and demands that she find employment on the Federal Writers’ Project, a New Deal jobs program. Within days, Layla finds herself far from her accustomed social whirl, assigned to cover the history of the remote mill town of Macedonia, West Virginia, and destined, in her opinion, to go completely mad with boredom. But once she secures a room in the home of the unconventional Romeyn family, she is drawn into their complex world and soon discovers that the truth of the town is entangled in the thorny past of the Romeyn dynasty.
At the Romeyn house, twelve-year-old Willa is desperate to learn everything in her quest to acquire her favorite virtues of ferocity and devotion—a search that leads her into a thicket of mysteries, including the questionable business that occupies her charismatic father and the reason her adored aunt Jottie remains unmarried. Layla’s arrival strikes a match to the family veneer, bringing to light buried secrets that will tell a new tale about the Romeyns. As Willa peels back the layers of her family’s past, and Layla delves deeper into town legend, everyone involved is transformed—and their personal histories completely rewritten.
Read by Ann Marie Lee, Tara Sands, and Julia Whelan, with additional readings by Cassandra Campbell, Danny Campbell, Mark Deakins, Kimberly Farr, Kirby Heyborne, Lincoln Hoppe, Paul Michael, Linda Montana, and Arthur Morey.
Praise for The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
“A jewel . . . poignant and keenly observed . . . a small masterpiece about love, war, and the immeasurable sustenance to be found in good books and good friends.”—People
“Affirms the power of books to nourish people enduring hard times.”—The Washington Post
“This is a book for firesides or long train rides. It’s as charming and timeless as the novels for which its characters profess their love.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“A book-lover’s delight, an implicit and sometimes explicit paean to all things literary.”—Chicago Sun-Times
“A poignant, funny novel that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit . . . This one is a treat.”—The Boston Globe
“Smart and delightful . . . Treat yourself to this book, please—I can’t recommend it highly enough.”—Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love and The Signature of All Things
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
June 9, 2015 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781101889954
- File size: 543833 KB
- Duration: 18:52:59
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Multiple narrators offer range and textural interest to this involving story of redemption in the Great Depression. When Layla Beck refuses to marry the man chosen by her father-the-senator, she ends up in tiny Macedonia, West Virginia, boarding with a local family as she writes up the town's history on behalf of the Federal Writers' Project. The complications that ensue are told by many people, including the family's 8-year-old daughter, a 50-something factory manager, and Layla herself. Core narrators Ann Marie Lee, Tara Sands, and Julia Whelan offer clear and consistent character readings that steer listeners through the novel's varied voices, while also highlighting the characters' diversity of experience. Another nine actors provide added depth and color. A.C.S. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine -
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.
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