Out shopping one day last summer, I scanned a table of books. Annie Barrows name caught my eye and the title of one of her other books The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. So I looked closer. The title appealed ~ the Truth According to us. My ability to choose a book to read is often this shallow. However, after having read it, I recommended it to the group for my selection when it was my turn to host. This month, the Truth According to us brought the heat of a 1938 West Virginia summer to January, 2017 in Victoria, B.C.
Macedonia is a fictional small town in West Virginia in the year 1938. Layla Beck, a senator’s daughter, has been abruptly cut off from her privileged life by her father. Her highest education is limited to graduation from a Finishing School. She is unemployed. In the Great Depression. Her uncle Ben, under duress from his brother, gives her work with the Federal Writer’s Project. Historically, this Project was an actual federal initiative funding written work and to support writers in this economically devastating time. Layla, assigned to write the history of Macedonia, arrives alone and quite penniless, but well dressed. At the train station she meets Bird, one of the young girls in this story, come to accompany Layla to her mother's boarding house. Willa, Bird’s sister, had fallen and was left behind and so missed this auspicious occasion to a home filled with secrets and eccentricities while displaying southern gentility.
The story unfolds as Layla learns how to be independent while learning the history of the town. Layla’s privilege and protected life is juxtaposed with the economically deprived lives of the residents of Macedonia. Which version of the history of the town is accurate? That of the mayor wanting to bestow prestige and glory upon this tiny town? Or the story of the Romeyn Family? Which version is more principled?
Willa Romeyn, twelve years old narrated much of this story with the wit and honesty of a child, reminiscent of Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. She sees Layla as an interloper and threat who really doesn’t know much and who likes her father Felix. She describes her aunts, Jottie and the twins Mae and Minerva. Jottie is raising Willa and Bird while Felix is conducting 'his business'. Mae and Minerva have their own eccentricities. Willa’s main concern is tracking down her father’s business.
The Truth According to us is an easily read story taking the reader into the complexities of small town history and fading class divisions.
“I’ve learned that history is the autobiography of the historian,
that ignoring the past is the act of a fool, and
that loyalty does notmean falling into line,
but stepping out of it for the people you love.”
~ Annie Barrows, the Truth According to us.
Title: the Truth According to us
Author: Annie Barrows
Publisher: The Dial Press
Publication Date: 2016
Format: Soft Cover
ISBN: 978-0-385-34295-7 (pbk;acid free paper)
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9784-2 (e-book)
Type: Fiction
Out shopping one day last summer, I scanned a table of books. Annie Barrows name caught my eye and the title of one of her other books The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. So I looked closer. The title appealed ~ the Truth According to us. My ability to choose a book to read is often this shallow. However, after having read it, I recommended it to the group for my selection when it was my turn to host. This month, the Truth According to us brought the heat of a 1938 West Virginia summer to January, 2017 in Victoria, B.C.
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