SERENDIPITOUS TUESDAYS: INTROS/TEASERS — NECESSARY LIES — JULY 30

 

 

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, from Tuesday/First Chapter/Intros, hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea; and Teaser Tuesdays hosted by Should Be Reading.

 

Today’s featured book is an ARC from a favorite author:  Diane Chamberlain’s Necessary Lies.

 

 

Intro:  (Brenna)

It was an odd request—visit a stranger’s house and peer inside a closet—and as I drove through the neighborhood searching for the address, I felt my anxiety mounting.

There it was:  number 247.  I hadn’t expected the house to be so large.  It stood apart from its neighbors on the gently winding road, flanked on either side by huge magnolia trees, tall oaks, and crepe myrtle.  It was painted a soft buttery yellow with white trim, and everything about it looked crisp and clean in the early morning sun.  Every house I’d passed, although different in architecture, had the same stately yet inviting look.  I didn’t know Raleigh well at all, but this had to be one of the most beautiful old neighborhoods in the city.

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Teaser:  A few blue pamphlets were tucked into a stack of other papers.  I pulled one of them out and leafed through it.  It was full of simple drawings that looked like they’d been done by a kindergartner, but it was the message behind the pictures that made me uncomfortable.  (p. 145)

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Blurb:  After losing her parents, fifteen-year-old Ivy Hart is left to care for her grandmother, older sister and nephew as tenants on a small tobacco farm.  As she struggles with her grandmother’s aging, her sister’s mental illness and her own epilepsy, she realizes they might need more than she can give.

When Jane Forrester takes a position as Grace County’s newest social worker, she doesn’t realize just how much her help is needed.  She quickly becomes emotionally invested in her clients’ lives, causing tension with her boss and her new husband.  But as Jane is drawn in by the Hart women, she begins to discover the secrets of the small farm—secrets much darker than she would have guessed.  Soon, she must decide whether to take drastic action to help them, or risk losing the battle against everything she believes is wrong.

Set in rural Grace County, North Carolina in a time of state-mandated sterilizations and racial tension, Necessary Lies tells the story of these two young women, seemingly worlds apart, but both haunted by tragedy.  Jane and Ivy are thrown together and must ask themselves: how can you know what you believe is right, when everyone is telling you it’s wrong?

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What do you think?  Would you keep reading?  I know that I can’t wait!