Caty Robertson arrives in the world physically fragile and abundantly loved, destined to grow tall and strong like her parents. She’s raised in the glow of Daddy’s generous embrace of humanity and his entertaining stories about Caty’s mother, Lenore. But Caty doesn’t remember her mother, and Daddy is vague about the reasons for her absence.
By young adulthood, Caty creates an idealized vision of her parents’ romance in Berkeley of the early ’70s, a hotbed of social and political change. Lenore is a brilliant law student, eager to tackle every injustice. Roy is an injured Vietnam War veteran and talented chef who dreams of owning a restaurant. The lovers are unlike each other in every way—race, class, politics, and values—yet they soar high on their love, powering through money troubles, his PTSD, and her family’s disapproval of their relationship.
Why, then, does Lenore leave Caty and her father? The separation was amicable, Daddy says, and although they’ve lost touch, he’s sure “she’s livin’ a good life” wherever she is. Sensing more to the story, fearing a hurt greater than Daddy lets on, Caty undertakes a secret investigation to protect his feelings. As she begins her search in earnest, she uncovers startling, unimaginable details—but the facts will remain elusive until she can find her mother and demand the truth.
Indelicate Deception celebrates the unbreakable bond of love between a father and his daughter while unraveling the self-deceptive path of a woman who could have had it all.
Award-winning author V.S. Kemanis has a professional background in the law and the arts. As a lawyer, she worked many years as a litigator in New York’s criminal justice system and as a supervising editor of decisions for the busiest appellate court in the country. An accomplished dancer of ballet and contemporary styles, Kemanis has performed, choreographed, and taught dance in California, Colorado, and New York.
Short fiction by Ms. Kemanis has been published in literary journals, magazines, and anthologies including Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, The Crooked Road Volume 3, The Best Laid Plans, Me Too Short Stories, and Autumn Noir, among others. Her book, Your Pick: Selected Stories, won the Eric Hoffer Award for best story collection and was a Montaigne Medal Finalist. Other award-winning stories are published in four volumes, Dust of the Universe, Everyone But Us, Malocclusion, and Love and Crime. Legal thrillers Thursday’s List, Homicide Chart, Forsaken Oath, Deep Zero, Seven Shadows, and Power Blind feature prosecutor Dana Hargrove who, like the author, juggles the competing demands of family with a high-powered professional career in the law.
Ms. Kemanis is a member of Mystery Writers of America.
Indelicate Deception is a moving, multilayered, and emotionally gripping literary novel that explores identity, memory, and the fragile truths that bind families together. V.S. Kemanis delivers a story rich with tenderness, suspense, and psychological tension all anchored in the unbreakable bond between a loving father and the daughter who trusts him completely.
What stands out immediately is the novel’s powerful contrast between the warmth of Caty Robertson’s upbringing and the haunting absence of her mother, Lenore. Raised under Roy’s generous spirit and captivating stories, Caty grows with a sense of love and safety yet always with a quiet, aching question: What really happened to my mother?
Kemanis masterfully builds the idealized vision Caty creates of her parents’ relationship: Lenore, the brilliant and justice driven Berkeley law student of the early ’70s; Roy, the gifted chef and Vietnam veteran wrestling with PTSD while dreaming of a better life. Their love crosses boundaries of race, class, politics, and worldview creating a union both improbable and intensely magnetic.
This makes Caty’s discovery journey all the more compelling. Her search for the truth evolves into a deeply emotional excavation of family mythology, self protection, and the ways love can blind, heal, or deceive. The revelations she uncovers are stark, startling, and painfully human, yet Kemanis handles them with empathy and narrative precision.
The novel is beautifully written reflective, sensory, and character driven. It blends coming of age immediacy with the slow burn tension of a literary mystery. Most of all, it celebrates a father’s unwavering devotion while unmasking the heartbreaking complexities of a woman who walked away from everything.
Readers of family drama, intergenerational mysteries, literary fiction with emotional depth, and stories rooted in social and political undercurrents of the 1970s will find Indelicate Deception both captivating and unforgettable.
I’m excited to let you know about my new novel, set to launch April 5, 2025, one month from today.
The 5-Star rating here is my way of passing along the collective opinion of several enthusiastic pre-publication reviewers. I’ve quoted excerpts, below, and provided links to the full reviews. Keep an eye out in the next few days for the Goodreads Giveaway to win a free e-book.
Indelicate Deception is a family story set in Berkeley, California, spanning decades from the early 1970s through the ’90s as we follow a young woman’s path to understanding, and ultimately confronting, her absent mother. Raised by a loving father, Caty creates an idealized vision of the mother she never knew. Despite her parents’ differences—race, class, politics, and values—they forged a deep love in a turbulent era, yet her mother’s disappearance remains a mystery. As a young adult, Caty digs deeper into her parents’ past. Her romantic illusions crumble as she uncovers startling, unimaginable details, but the facts remain elusive until she tracks down her mother and demands the truth.
I came of age in Berkeley during an era of profound social change: feminism, the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, riots, hippies and ‘free love.’ With my fictional characters, I seek to capture the good and bad of the era and make sense of its lessons. Most of all, I hope to engage my readers with the story of Caty and her parents, to feel their joys and sorrows, the love, loss, reckoning, and renewal.
And now, here is what reviewers are saying:
“V.S. Kemanis’s layered examination of what initially appears to be a love story at the Bay Area epicenter of the flower-power era morphs into a compelling mystery that asks hard questions about race and commitment. In alternating chapters, Indelicate Deception follows Caty, from the 1990s, and her parents, from the early 1970s, until the stories merge and escalate to a chilling conclusion… Caty’s pursuit of the truth…pulses with the page-turning urgency of a thriller. Characters shine with dimension and depth as Kemanis offers honest portrayals of human courage and deep flaws…[asking] what it means to be true to oneself and what we owe to those we love.” — BlueInk Review (Starred Review)
“A woman’s quest for the truth unravels a web of secrets and lies that threaten everything she thought she knew about her family in Kemanis’ utterly absorbing novel… Themes of truth, perception, and deception run throughout, urging readers to question how much of our reality is shaped by what we choose to believe. The novel expertly examines how memory can serve both as a comfort and an obstacle to understanding, particularly within the emotionally charged realm of family history. A beautifully crafted and deeply moving story.” — BookView Review (Five Stars)
“Weaving a compelling family drama from the political and social turmoil of the early seventies, V. S. Kemanis demonstrates once more her thoughtful compassion for the human condition. Indelicate Deception presents the reader not only with an intriguing mystery of a young mother who vanishes from her family’s life, but a journey of discovery that her daughter, Caty, sets out upon. Roy, her laid-back and loving father, urges her to move on with her life, but Caty feels she must find her mother and know the truth whatever the cost. These unforgettable characters and their story will linger not just in your memory, but in your heart, long after you’ve read the last page of this powerful novel.” — David Dean, Award-Winning Author of The German Informant
“Indelicate Deception by V.S. Kemanis is a universally placed, character-driven novel about the nature of love, memory, truth, and the complexity of family dynamics. A mix of nostalgia, suspense, and emotional depth, Indelicate Deception is beautifully written and takes a deep dive into the nature of memory, the stories we tell ourselves, and the truths we can’t bear. V.S. Kemanis skillfully delivers pulsating emotion and psychological density. Kemanis’ prose is vivid and immersive, pulling readers into other ages through lingering descriptions and intimate monologues. A principal strength of the novel is its investigation of memory and truth… Indelicate Deception is a poignant, intellectual take on identity, love, and the interplay of deception and honesty in our lives.” — Manhattan Book Review (5 Stars)
“Gripping, intense, and profound… Evocative prose and authentic dialogue enrich the emotional complexity of the narrative, blending moments of tenderness, humor, and heartbreak. Kemanis masterfully weaves emotional depth with nuanced character development… A captivating, thought-provoking exploration of family secrets and the pursuit of truth.” — The Prairies Book Review
“An absorbing tale that simmers with love, unresolved questions, and surprising twists and turns… Kemanis is especially skilled at drawing important connections between idealization and reality… Libraries choosing Indelicate Deception for its strong characterization, thought-provoking moral and ethical considerations, and psychological depth…will find it easy to recommend the novel to book clubs.” — D. Donovan, Midwest Book Review
“What makes Indelicate Deception so compelling is its ability to capture the shades of gray in every human relationship… The novel’s prose is elegant and restrained, allowing the characters’ emotions to simmer just beneath the surface, creating a tension that lingers long after the final page. I found Indelicate Deception to be an exquisitely moving meditation on the past’s grip on the present… Kemanis has given us a story that is as delicate as it is devastating, and one that, for me, will not soon be forgotten.” — San Francisco Book Review
3.5 stars. Well-written, ambitious, character-based novel about an interracial couple and their daughter.
The perspective-shifting (from one character's to another's to omniscient) was confusing for me at first. At one point, I wondered, "How does she know that he has a 'good leg'?" At another, "How does he know the name of her friend?" But then I got used to it and became engrossed in the story.
I enjoyed many scenes--especially the camping trip that didn't quite pan out--and I liked the discussion of race at the end, which is almost identical to what I've said to my own children.
The biggest problem for me was that, although it was clear the couple admired each other and were physically attracted, they didn't seem to have enough in common to stay together for any length of time. I had no sense of their shared mutually enjoyable activities or their mundane, day-to-day conversations--and they were surprisingly uncommunicative about important things, like who would take care of their baby after it was born.
Also, I could understand... sort of... the couple's isolation from their families of origin, but the complete absence of any extended family members seemed a little improbable. No stray cousins or aunts or uncles... anywhere?
I just dropped a review for Indelicate Deception, and it is a beautifully layered, emotionally resonant novel that explores family, identity, and the fragile truths we construct to survive. V.S. Kemanis delivers a compelling blend of mystery and emotional inquiry, guided by characters whose love, flaws, and histories feel undeniably real.
The relationship between Caty and her father is the heart of the story, tender, nurturing, and filled with unspoken grief. Their bond is written with such honesty that the reader immediately feels the stakes as Caty begins questioning the gaps in the stories she’s been told. The alternating threads of her present-day search and the vivid, intoxicating glimpse into her parents’ 1970s Berkeley romance make for a beautifully balanced narrative. The cultural tension, political upheaval, and idealism of that era add depth to Roy and Lenore’s relationship and highlight just how much love they were fighting for, and fighting against.
What elevates the novel is Kemanis’s willingness to explore self-deception with nuance and empathy. As Caty’s investigation unfolds, every revelation feels both shocking and painfully human. The search for her mother becomes a search for truth, identity, and emotional closure in ways that resonate long after the final page.
Indelicate Deception is an elegantly written, heartfelt exploration of family and the hidden truths that shape us, thought-provoking, deeply engaging, and beautifully told.
"Indelicate Deception" by V.S. Kemanis is an engrossing novel that delves into family secrets, self-deception, and the deep bond between a father and daughter. The story centers around Caty and her father, Roy. Raised solely by Roy, Caty knows little about her mother, Lenore, and has long been curious about her absence.
According to Roy, he and Lenore were once drawn to each other when she was studying law. He tells Caty that Lenore left for another city to pursue her legal career. However, Caty isn't convinced. The stories Roy shares about Lenore often feel incomplete or embellished.
Determined to uncover the truth, Caty embarks on a quiet investigation, seeking out people who once knew her mother. As she begins to peel back layers of the past, what revelations await her? Though Roy never discourages her questions, his responses often remain vague and evasive.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. The narrative is both smooth and powerful, with a fitting title that captures the heart of the story. The pacing is steady, keeping the reader engaged throughout with no dull moments. Caty’s inquisitive nature made her a particularly compelling character, and the author’s descriptive writing made her feel incredibly real to me.
Indelicate Deception is a heart-breaking yet triumphant family story by V.S. Kemanis. Caty Robertson felt a hole in her life since childhood as she grappled with the absence of her mother. Her protective father, Roy, breadcrumbed details about Caty’s mother, Len, while shielding her from his pain and the mystery of Len’s exit.
Kemanis’s detailed and powerful writing pulls back the curtain on each character’s feelings, doubts, and questions as the years move on. Caty longs for a mother but finds community with friends Haley and Jed. With laser sharp observations, readers are transported to the freewheeling 1970s, the atrocities of the Vietnam war, and the ubiquitous sting of racism within family dynamics and society.
I highly recommend this read and am grateful to Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to savor this magnificent work.
I just finished this book and found it to be a realistic portrayal of love, abandonment and parental protectiveness. I know that the author brings her legal expertise to the novel and I worried that it would make the story harder to follow. But Ms Kemanis always explained the terms and made me more aware of the challenges that a lawyer has to face. I felt it to me a touching and relevant read.
I flew through this book. The writing is smooth and the multi-faceted time-line and point of view narrations are expertly employed. This more mainstream/literary novel by a writer known for her mystery/thrillers was a leap to a new level.
This book was multi layered and riveting . It got me out of my reading slump !This author is a friend of mine, so I thought I would have difficulties separating that out .It did not take me long to get fully absorbed,and Im excited now to read her other stories.
I found this family saga kept me turning pages as a mystery would. Starting in the hotbed of political and social change that was Berkeley the early ’70s, the novel traces the efforts of a young woman to discover what really was involved in the dissolution of her parents' great, idealized, love.
I could not put down this book! Beautifully written, memorable characters, and suspenseful - I was eager to learn the answer to the central question of the plot, and yet it didn’t want the book to end. A wonderful book!