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If They Hadn't Lied
When Ruby disappears on the day of Bobby Kennedy's funeral, her best friend, Hazel, doesn't believe the official explanation that she's entered a convent. The girls have been best friends since the start of first grade in their Catholic school. Ruby quietly dismissed the nuns' religious teachings, throwing out the baby Jesus along with the bathwater and the notion of virgin birth. Hazel, on the other hand, took even the most contradictory teachings to heart, valuing above all other doctrines the one that says The Nun Talking To You Is Always Right.
Amidst the upheaval of the sixties, including within the Catholic Church, the absurd explanation for Ruby's disappearance forces a grieving Hazel to face some of the illusions she's held, while the truth behind the disappearance drives the clear-eyed Ruby to accept delusion.
Fifty years later, amid the national turmoil of a new era, each of the women is affected by the family separations that are happening at the southern border. As illusions are peeled away to reveal family secrets both new and old, both women must confront the lies they've been told by the people they trusted in childhood. If they hadn't lied, neither Ruby nor Hazel would have had to accept so many losses. The question for them now is whether they can also accept the gifts with which their unplanned lives have left them.
Amidst the upheaval of the sixties, including within the Catholic Church, the absurd explanation for Ruby's disappearance forces a grieving Hazel to face some of the illusions she's held, while the truth behind the disappearance drives the clear-eyed Ruby to accept delusion.
Fifty years later, amid the national turmoil of a new era, each of the women is affected by the family separations that are happening at the southern border. As illusions are peeled away to reveal family secrets both new and old, both women must confront the lies they've been told by the people they trusted in childhood. If they hadn't lied, neither Ruby nor Hazel would have had to accept so many losses. The question for them now is whether they can also accept the gifts with which their unplanned lives have left them.
242 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 28, 2019
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