Secrets populate novel

The Kindest Lie a layered exploration of race and class

What is the cost of secrets and lies? That's the question at the heart of Nancy Johnson's debut novel, The Kindest Lie, the story of a woman preparing to have her first child with the husband she adores; but first, she must confront the fact she already has a son — a baby she was forced to give up when she was a teenager.

We first meet Ruth Tuttle, a young Black woman, on election night in 2008. Ruth, a successful Yale-educated engineer, is surrounded by an equally successful husband, Xavier, and friends, as they celebrate an impossible dream realized, the election of the nation's first Black president, Barack Obama. This moment of jubilation coincides with Xavier's desire to expand their family of two. But Ruth is haunted by the baby boy she left behind. Where is he? Why did she allow him to be taken in the first place?

Ruth leaves Chicago and returns home to the small factory town in Indiana she has shunned for years. The change in location shifts the story into a layered, complex exploration of race and class. It is the height of the Great Recession and Ruth's hometown is shot through with fear, grievance and hopelessness. Johnson is particularly adept at drawing the dividing lines between African-Americans and working-class whites, while at the same time illuminating the things they share, including a struggle to survive amid layoffs and a dearth of opportunity in the economically devastated industrial Midwest.

The intersecting lives of Blacks and whites — and their divergent understanding of each other — are rendered with care, particularly through Ruth's relationship with Midnight, an 11-year-old white boy. Midnight is being raised primarily by his grandmother amid the emotional ruins of a troubled childhood. He is adrift and searching for his own sense of belonging.

That question of belonging — who we belong to, who belongs to us — opens the door for Johnson to explore what it means to be a mother. What it means to have given birth to a child but have no part in his life. The boy's absence and Ruth's longing to experience life as his mother are ever present.

As Ruth moves forward with her search for the boy she left behind, she must confront difficult, inconvenient truths of her family's buried past at every turn, which adds another layer of suspense for the reader and focuses the spotlight on other key characters, such as Ruth's careworn grandmother, who is the keeper of the most consequential of family secrets.

Beyond motherhood and secrets from the past, there is the question of Ruth's marriage. Xavier is blindsided by the news that she has a child.

This is a story about reconciliation. But more than anything, it is a meditation on family and forgiveness.