Available for purchase now. Paperback release 2/1/22.
Paperback edition includes book club questions, a Q&A with Nancy, and a behind-the-book essay!
THE KINDEST LIE
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 abandoned—when she was a teenager. She had promised her family she’d never look back, but 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—like the comfortable middle-class life she now enjoys.
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 adrift and looking for connection. When a traumatic incident strains the town’s already searing racial tensions, Ruth and Midnight find themselves on a collision course that could upend both of their lives.
The Kindest Lie examines the heartbreaking divide between black and white communities and plumbs the emotional depths of the struggles faced by ordinary Americans in the wake of the financial crisis. Capturing the profound racial injustices and class inequalities roiling society, Nancy Johnson’s debut novel offers an unflinching view of motherhood in contemporary America and the never-ending quest to achieve the American Dream.
Amazon Editors'
Best of the Month
Indie Next pick
Library Reads pick
Book of the Month
Club pick
PRAISE
“The Kindest Lie is a deep dive into how we define family, what it means to be a mother, what secrets we owe to those we love, and what it means to grow up Black. Does our past become the skeleton upon which our future fleshes out — or can we erase our beginnings? This beautifully crafted debut will keep you asking these questions and more.”
— Jodi Picoult, New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Two Ways and Small Great Things
—Rumaan Alam, New York Times bestselling author of Leave the World Behind and That Kind of Mother
—Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, author of The Revisioners
“Race, class, family and secrets are all on a collision course in Johnson’s extraordinarily moving, timely read. Like a heat-seeking missile, her novel hones in on who we think we belong to and why, following the merging lives of Ruth, a black female engineer who seeks out the child she gave away, and Midnight, a young white boy struggling to find his place in the very poverty Ruth managed to escape. A gloriously written, stunning heart scorcher about who we are and what we could be.”
—Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You and Cruel Beautiful World
“In The Kindest Lie, Nancy Johnson gives us two unforgettable characters. Ruth and Midnight represent different Americas: one trending up, one spiraling down. Johnson–through graceful sentences, tenderness, dramatic expertise, and overflowing empathy–is able to twist these Americas into a singular portrait of a country in transition. This enviable debut enlightens while breaking your heart. A truly beautiful achievement.”
—Gabriel Bump, author of Everywhere You Don’t Belong
“The Kindest Lie is that rare debut novel that grabs your heart and breath, pulls you in for an emotional journey, and leaves you in awe. Nancy Johnson leads her readers into a story about race and family, weaving her characters in nuanced ways that are relevant today. It will be a long time before I stop thinking daily about Ruth and Midnight. Their emotional and very human stories will leave readers breathless and wanting to talk about every scene of this stunning and important book.”
—Ron Block, librarian, Cuyahoga County Public Library
“In this winning portrait of circumstance, sacrifice, and forgiveness, the lines that separate past from present and right from wrong are erased and redrawn–oftentimes with earth-shattering consequences. Rife with rich language, shocking revelations, and easy-to-fall-into characters, The Kindest Lie is the kind of novel you’ll feel in your bones.
—Zakiya Dalila Harris, New York Times bestselling author of The Other Black Girl
“Nancy Johnson is an accomplished writer. She has a gift for character and juggles the multiple narrative voices beautifully in THE KINDEST LIE. This novel will appeal to fans of literary fiction, women’s fiction, and book clubs, and especially to readers of Tayari Jones.”
—Pamela Klinger-Horn, Excelsior Bay Books
“Essential, powerful, wrenching: Nancy Johnson’s debut novel tells a history of family secrets and lies shaped by the racism that permeates modern America. There were scenes I flinched from reading, including a powerful chapter on Chicago’s L, where Black professionals hold themselves very still to avoid a police confrontation. More than any essay or sermon, Johnson’s narrative lays bare the inescapable racism faced by Black Americans no matter their education or social status. A riveting story, a searing lesson on why Black Lives Matter is today’s crucial social justice movement.”
—Sara Paretsky, International and New York Times bestselling author of Dead Land
“In the “The Kindest Lie” Nancy Johnson takes us both into a bygone time, the dawning of the Obama era, and into the tender heart of her protagonist Ruth. This is a novel that seeks to discover the beauty of our journeys despite the lies we tell each other and ourselves.”
—Rion Amilcar Scott, award-winning author of The World Doesn’t Require You and Insurrections
“The Kindest Lie is not only a superb debut novel, it is without qualification a superb novel. Nancy Johnson endows her characters with a generous grace that slowly embraces the reader as the plot unfolds, accomplishing what the very best novels do—tell the stories of strangers so well we are ultimately compelled to discover the strangers within us all.”
—James Anderson, award-winning author of The Never-Open Desert Diner and Lullaby Road
“The Kindest Lie is a soul-stirring, vividly told saga that demands to be read! Johnson presents a story with dazzling prose and textured, complicated characters that haunt you long after you’ve closed the book. It’s hard to believe The Kindest Lie is Johnson’s debut as it’s told with such an assured voice and graceful conviction. I thoroughly enjoyed and highly recommend!”
—Catherine Adel West, author of Saving Ruby King
