The Truth According to Us

In the midst of the Great Depression, Layla Beck's father, the Honorable Senator from Delaware, cuts her off and she must go on relief. Fortunately for Layla, she has friends in high places and, unlike the millions standing in soup lines, she's able to quickly secure a job as a writer for the Federal Writers' Project. Promptly, she is shuttled off to little Macedonia, West Virginia, a far cry from her previous summer playground, Cape May.

Macedonia is, Layla quickly deduces, a hick town, with little of consequence. (It does not, however, have coal mines, for which is is at least minimally grateful.) Still she must write her book, and she throws herself into the task with gusto. As the weeks pass, her life becomes intertwined with the formerly proud but now fallen Romeyns, in particular shady Felix and his daughters Bird and Willa, as well as Felix's steady but odd siblings, Jottie, Mae, Emmett, and Minerva.

I *loved* the The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, of which Annie Barrows was one of two authors, and I wanted to love this. And I did love parts of it. The names, for example. Jottie. Willa. Bird. Felix. Also, the incorporation of the Federal Writers' Project, and some of the hilarious interactions between author and subject(s). Likewise, The Truth According to Us does a fine job of capturing the prettiness and pettiness of small-town America, and America teetering between the teeth of the Great Depression and the brink of World War II.

In the end, though, I couldn't help but feel a bit...meh. In part, I believe that's because the letter writing device, which worked to so well in Guernsey, seemed trite and tired here. A few pages chopped here and there wouldn't have hurt. The characters, too, felt overdrawn to the point of caricature and Willa, for whom I believe the reader is supposed to have the greatest felling, evoked a combination of contempt and pity from me. Mostly, though, I put that down to the ending, which, without giving anything away, left me disappointed. Barrows, it seemed, was about proving some larger "life lesson" than allowing the story to end as seemed most fitting. Or least as I deemed most fitting.