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The Truth According to Us: A Novel
Author:
Barrows, Annie
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Class:
Fiction
Age: Adult
Language: English
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LC: PS3602.A
Print Run: 75000
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ISBN-13: 9780385342940
LCCN: 2014037515
Imprint: Dial Press
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Pub Date: 06/09/2015
Availability: Out of Print Confirmed
List: $28.00
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Hardcover
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Physical Description:
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491 pages ; 25 cm
H 9.5",
W 6.35",
D 1.61",
1.65 lbs.
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LC Series:
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Brodart Sources:
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Brodart's Insight Catalog: Adult
Brodart's TOP Adult Titles
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Bibliographies:
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Los Angeles Times Bestsellers List
Publishers Weekly Bestsellers
Texas Lariate Reading List
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Awards:
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Library Journal Starred Reviews
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Starred Reviews:
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Library Journal
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TIPS Subjects:
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Historical Fiction
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BISAC Subjects: |
FICTION / Literary
FICTION / Historical / General
FICTION / Sagas
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LC Subjects:
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Depressions, 1929, West Virginia, Fiction
FICTION / Historical
FICTION / Literary
FICTION / Sagas
Family secrets, Fiction
Historians, Fiction
Historical fiction
West Virginia, History, 20th century, Fiction
West Virginia, Social life and customs, 20th century, Fiction
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SEARS Subjects: |
Family secrets, Fiction
Great Depression, 1929-1939, West Virginia, Fiction
Historians, Fiction
Historical fiction
West Virginia, History, 20th century, Fiction
West Virginia, Social life and customs, Fiction
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Reading Programs: |
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| Annotations |
| Brodart's TOP Adult Titles | 03/01/2015 |
| Forced to record Macedonia's first official historical account after refusing to marry the man her father chose for her, a Delaware senator's daughter forms an unexpected bond with Virginia's well-known Romeyn family, whose offbeat members reveal the truth behind their rise to prominence in the backwater town. Three narrators recount the family's struggle to hold fast to hope in the midst of the Great Depression. 512pp., 75K, Auth res: Berkeley, CA |
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| Starred Reviews: |
| Library Journal | 05/21/2015 |
| Barrows follows up The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society with a small-town story filled with big characters. In the summer of 1938 Layla Beck's influential father cuts her off and insists she find work with the New Deal program the Federal Writer's Project. Layla is sent to pen the history of a remote mill town in West Virginia and takes up lodging with the unconventional Romeyn family, one of whom is keen to help her uncover buried family and town secrets. VERDict A warm family novel of love, history, truth, and hope that is a solid fit for fans of Lee Smith and Paula McLain. (LJ 4/15/15). 512p. LJ Reviews Online Review. LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2015. |
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| Journal Reviews |
| BookPage | 06/01/2015 |
| For the irrepressible 12-year-old heroine of The Truth According to Us, growing up in the sleepy West Virginia mill town of Macedonia at the height of the Great Depression proves to be anything but depressing. Fans of Annie Barrows' bestseller The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, co-written with her aunt, will recognize the author's affinity for breathing life into her characters. Here we meet young Willa Romeyn; Willa's charming, albeit mysterious, father, Felix; the ever steady and steely Aunt Jottie; and the family's summer boarder, the lovely Layla Beck. Spoiled, sheltered Layla has been exiled to Macedonia by her senator father, who is fed up with her irresponsible behavior and ill-chosen suitors. The Works Progress Administration has hired her to write the town's history--a literary project that holds far more intrigue, romance and adventure than she imagined. Layla is soon passionately and eloquently recording the tired town's colorful and often scandalous history, diligently excavating the myriad skeletons buried in the closets of Macedonian high society, including the secrets of her landlords and newfound friends, the Romeyns. Despite her best intentions, Layla falls under Felix's spell. Her adoration does not go unnoticed by the intuitive and envious Willa, who, upon investigating her father's frequent absences and secretive second life as a "chemical" salesman, is starting to uncover hard truths about the family patriarch. Perhaps not surprisingly for the author of a best-selling middle-grade series (Ivy and Bean), Barrows has crafted a luminous coming-of-age tale that is sure to captivate her grown-up audience. Against a lively historical setting, the joys and hardships of the rollicking Romeyn family will keep readers eagerly turning pages. Karen Ann Cullotta. 512. BOOKPAGE, c2015. |
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| Booklist | 05/01/2015 |
| Cast out by her U.S. senator father for disparaging the nature of hard work while the Great Depression rages on, refined Layla Beck lands a job with the Federal Writers' Project that sends her to the hardscrabble apple-and-coal country of West Virginia's Eastern Panhandle. Tasked with writing the history of the small town of Macedonia, Layla boards with the Romeyns, once considered one of the town's first families until a scandal and tragedy involving the family's mill turns them into outcasts. Smitten with black sheep Felix, scrutinized by his 12-year-old daughter, Willa, and befriended by his spinster sister, Jottie, Lalya finds herself the unlikely catalyst for a redemption, reunion, and, if not a reversal of fortune, at least an understanding of past events and acceptance of future alliances. Author of the beloved Ivy and Bean children's series and coauthor of the phenomenally popular Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2008) with her aunt, Mary Shaffer, Barrows brings a deft, light, yet crisp and probing touch to this confluence of tender people confronting tough circumstances. YA: Depression-era history becomes personal and recognizable for teen readers when viewed through the eyes of Barrows' precocious 12-year-old narrator. CH. Haggas, Carol. 491p. AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, c2015. |
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| Kirkus Reviews | 04/15/2015 |
| The co-author of a novel about the Nazi occupation of the Channel Islands now turns her attention to scandals besetting a small Depression-era West Virginia town. Barrows, who co-wrote the surprise bestseller The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2008), takes a similarly panoramic approach to the insular hamlet of Macedonia, West Virginia, using multiple points of view with epistolary interludes. It's 1938, and the owner of Macedonia's primary employer, the American Everlasting sock factory, has just laid off 44 workers over the objection of Sol McKubin, longtime plant manager. This would never have happened had the Romeyns, once Macedonia's most prominent family, not lost control of Everlasting after the original factory was destroyed by arson in 1920. The novel's main source of suspense is the mystery surrounding that disaster. Vause Hamilton was alleged to have set the fire, killing himself and wrecking the future of his best friend, Felix Romeyn. Presumably the motive was theft: the safe was robbed and some of the money disappeared. Sol claimed Felix and Vause were in cahoots, but Sol's motives are suspect: not only was he envious of the two golden boys, Vause and Felix, but he loved Felix's sister, Jottie, who had eyes only for Vause. Now Jottie, who has never married, is raising Felix's young daughters, Willa and Bird, the products of a short-lived marriage, while feckless but charming Felix disappears for long stretches. Willa, a whip-smart tomboy in the Scout Finch mold, is alarmed at her father's flirtation with Layla, a Washington, D.C., debutante who is boarding at Jottie's house and writing a history of Macedonia for the WPA Writers' Project. The novel is too long: an initial section of exposition regarding Layla, a relatively superfluous character, could have been streamlined, and italicized flashbacks abound. The ironic contrast between Macedonia's official and actual history is played to the hilt, and this unique corner of Americana--a melange of Yankee and Southern cultures--is re-created as vividly as the very different Anglo-European milieu of Guernsey. Undeniably entertaining but as slow-moving as a steamy Macedonian summer. 512pg. KIRKUS MEDIA LLC, c2015. |
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| Publishers Weekly | 06/08/2015 |
| 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. (June). 512p. Web-Exclusive Review. PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, c2015. |
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9780385342940,dl.it[0].title
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