Nancy Johnson and Pat Simmons Bring the Love!

The Kindest Lie by Nancy Johnson

Release Date: February 2, 2021 (available for pre-order)

Genre: Literary/Contemporary Fiction

(Description provided by publisher.)

A promise could betray you.

It’s 2008, and the rise of Barack Obama ushers in a new kind of hope. In Chicago, Ruth Tuttle, an Ivy League-educated Black engineer, is married to a kind and successful man. He’s eager to start a family, but Ruth is uncertain. She has never gotten over the baby she gave birth to—and was forced to give up—when she was a teenager. Ruth knows that to move forward, she must make peace with the past.

Returning home, Ruth discovers the Indiana factory town of her youth is plagued by unemployment, racism, and despair. While her family is happy to see her, they remind her of the painful sacrifices they made to give her a shot at a better future.

Determined, Ruth begins digging into the past. As she uncovers burning secrets her family desperately wants to hide, she unexpectedly befriends Midnight, a young white boy who is also looking for connection. When a traumatic incident strains the town’s already scorching racial tensions, Ruth and Midnight find themselves on a collision course that could upend both their lives.

What you should know about Nancy:

Nancy Johnson is a girl from the South Side of Chicago! She’s also a journalist-turned-novelist who writes about race, class, and identity. @nancyjauthor

Denny: What are the key themes of the book and what inspired it?

Nancy: Barack Obama’s ascendance to the presidency birthed hope and promise in many across the nation, but especially Black people. I remember that night so well, and in my novel, I wanted to capture that palpable sense of hope. Yet as powerful as that hope was, it had its limits in a country that had never healed its racial wounds. The bitter divide between Black and white saddened me because I couldn’t understand how half of America saw things so differently than I did. The country was also experiencing an economic downturn and that financial stress exacerbated racial tensions. That’s something I wanted to explore, and it turned into The Kindest Lie. 

In addition to race and class, I also play with the themes of love and sacrifice. For example, Ruth’s grandmother tells the most insidious lies over the years to protect her family. That love and those lies tether Ruth to her past in ways she can’t outrun. 

Denny: What’s the key relationship or love story in the novel?

Nancy: Ruth and her husband, Xavier, have a good marriage, but he comes from a solidly upper middle-class family while hers is working class. Early in the novel, you see the fault lines in their relationship when she accuses him of being ashamed of her background, telling people his wife is from Indianapolis instead of Ganton, the small, dying factory town where she grew up. Also, she never revealed to him that she’d had a baby when she was a teenager, so that secret threatens their young marriage.

Denny: What was your favorite part of the book to write?

Nancy: I especially enjoyed the challenge of creating the character of Midnight, an 11-year-old white boy who is adrift and vulnerable. I’ve never been white, but I’ve had to navigate white spaces in school and on the job so I’m fairly fluent in whiteness. I’ve never been a boy either; however, I have been 11.  Where I really drew inspiration for Midnight  was my own experience as an outsider who was bullied as a kid. I understood his loneliness and longing for acceptance because I’d experienced that myself.

Denny: What are you binge-watching and reading right now?

Nancy: I’m reading an early copy of This Close To Okay by Leesa Cross-Smith. And on audio, I’m listening to The Given Day by Dennis Lehane. His book is set in Boston at the end of World War I and it’s been fascinating to see the uncanny parallels in public sentiment between the Spanish Influenza back then and the COVID-19 pandemic today.

A few months ago, I cut the cord and now I get all these movie channels through my Roku. So, I’m finally watching The Wire, a show with superb writing that I missed out on all these years. 

Denny: Thank you so much for chatting with me, Nancy! Now, as promised, here’s a special treat.