Honesty has become kind of a catchword in American discourse since, oh, around 2016. We seem unsure of what it is—what it should be, now. Even in the personal realm.

How much honesty prevails in our daily associations?

The question has broad effect in home life—and it occupies a central position in work life where it can be thorny, indeed.

That’s especially true for a writer.

For a writer of fiction and memoir, it may be the central question. Can a memoir tell the truth? Does truth play a role in fiction?

How much fiction is there in memoir, for that matter? In the true stories we read, in the biographies published about famous people.

When we socialize we often tell stories about outrageous characters we’ve known. Were the people really that outrageous, or do we dip into inky clouds of fiction when we tell their story? And how deeply?

You know the answer.

Just before he died, Texas columnist and novelist Leon Hale — WinedaleBooks , my partner and husband for forty years, asked me to write about him. I wasn’t sure whether it was a plea or an effort to grant permission. He understood that without some expression of approval from him I would not invade his privacy.

Maybe he’d known that the death of a beloved spouse inevitably reveals unsuspected secrets. That the widow’s imagination, fueled by the pain of grief and loss, would run loose, accumulating bruises and a few bleeding wounds. This widow, anyway.

He may have guessed that she would wonder how much honesty prevailed in the marriage, anyway?

Well, how much should prevail? Can there be a happy marriage with all warts and blemishes of the past revealed?

For it was a happy marriage.

I had to answer those questions and I did so in the only way I can. I wrote about them. The result is the memoir I mentioned yesterday.

THIS FAMILIAR HEART: An Improbable Love Story will be published next April by Winedale Publishing (ISBN 978-0-9752727-5-6).