THE KINDEST LIE by Nancy Johnson - Review

 


"Perfect mothers didn't exist, only perfectly flawed ones did."

Ruth Tuttle and Xavier Shaw are an Ivy-league educated, professional, Black couple on the quest for the American dream in a gentrified neighborhood on Chicago's, South Side. They have high paying jobs, a townhouse, cars, money and according to Xavier, it's time to start a family. But Ruth has a secret.

Debut author, Nancy Johnson's novel, THE KINDEST LIE (WilliamMorrow) opens on election night 2008. They are hosting an election results party at their home when Barack Obama wins, welcoming in a new era of hope. But for Ruth, it brings back memories of her struggling up-bringing in an Indiana factory town. She was raised by her grandmother and brother after her drug addict mother abandoned them. 

When Xavier decides its time to start a family, Ruth is first ambivalent about having a child and then she tells him the truth. Revealing her ugly secret drives a wedge between the two of them, so Ruth decides to go back to the town she grew up in. Ganton is still segregated exposing the people she left behind, including her son.

Nancy Johnson successfully tackles tough topics such as the divide between Black and white communities, motherhood, abandonment and explores just what is the American dream is. The characters are complex and well developed, the plot is multi-layered eventually coming to a satisfying conclusion. I look forward to what Nancy Johnson writes next.

A native of Chicago’s South Side, Nancy Johnson worked for more than a decade as an Emmy-nominated, award-winning television journalist at CBS and ABC affiliates in markets nationwide. 

Her debut novel, The Kindest Lie, has been reviewed by The Washington Post and is featured on Entertainment Weekly’s Must List. It’s been named one of the most anticipated books of 2021 by O, the Oprah Magazine, Shondaland, NBC News, Marie Claire, ELLE, The Chicago Tribune, The New York Post, Good Housekeeping, Parade, Refinery29, and more. Booksellers nationwide selected her novel as an Indie Next pick and librarians chose it for LibraryReads. Nancy’s work has been published in Real Simple and O, The Oprah Magazine, and has received support from the Hurston/Wright Foundation, Tin House, and Kimbilio Fiction. 

A graduate of Northwestern University and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Nancy lives in downtown Chicago and manages brand communications for a large health care nonprofit. The Kindest Lie is her first novel.

www.nancyjohnson.com

To purchase  THE KINDEST LIE

Comments

  1. Jill Hannah AndersonFebruary 22, 2021 at 8:29 AM

    This is a book I'm really looking forward to reading. Nancy read a few minutes of this book a few years ago at a writing retreat and I loved it even then!

    ReplyDelete

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