Title: Truths I Never Told You by Kelly Rimmer
Publisher: Graydon House
Genre: Historical (50s & 90s), Women’s Fiction, Mystery
Length: 352 pages
Book Rating: B+
Complimentary Review Copy Provided by Publisher Through NetGalley
Summary:
From the bestselling author of The Things We Cannot Say comes a poignant post-WWII novel that explores the expectations society places on women set within an engrossing family mystery that may unravel everything once believed to be true.
With her father recently moved to a care facility, Beth Walsh volunteers to clear out the family home and is surprised to discover the door to her childhood playroom padlocked. She’s even more shocked at what’s behind it—a hoarder’s mess of her father’s paintings, mounds of discarded papers and miscellaneous junk in the otherwise fastidiously tidy house.
As she picks through the clutter, she finds a loose journal entry in what appears to be her late mother’s handwriting. Beth and her siblings grew up believing their mother died in a car accident when they were little more than toddlers, but this note suggests something much darker.
Beth soon pieces together a disturbing portrait of a woman suffering from postpartum depression and a husband who bears little resemblance to the loving father Beth and her siblings know. With a newborn of her own and struggling with motherhood, Beth finds there may be more tying her and her mother together than she ever suspected.
Review:
Truths I Never Told You by Kelly Rimmer is a touching novel that also features a slight mystery element.
In 1996, Beth Evans, her sister Ruth Turner, and their brothers Tim and Jeremy Walsh are devastated that their beloved father Patrick’s health problems have drastically deteriorated. After moving him into hospice care, Beth volunteers to pack up the house so they can decide what to do with it. Shocked by a discovery in the attic, Beth becomes obsessed with learning the truth about their long deceased mother Grace.
In the late 1950s, Grace is a young wife who dearly loves her husband. Already struggling financially, the birth of four children in quick succession is taking a huge mental toll on Grace. Left on her own to care their kids, Grace battles deep postpartum depression that worsens with each subsequent baby. With Patrick failing to understand how deeply hopeless and lonely she feels, Grace puts her dark thoughts to paper hoping for relief. But becoming increasingly desperate, she turns to her older sister Mary Ann for help.
After years of infertility, Beth and her husband Hunter are now parents to five month old Noah. Beth is still on maternity leave and she keeps her doubts and insecurities to herself. But it is soon apparent to Hunter and the rest of her family that Beth is dealing with something much worse than new parent anxieties and exhaustion. Although Beth tries to convince them she is just trying to traverse the intricacies of new motherhood while preparing to lose her beloved father, will she accept that she needs professional help?
Grace’s portion of the storyline is told through the letters she writes that her children later unearth. They are confronted with a very different portrait of the father they adore. Beth is also troubled by conflicting information she discovers that leads to a bit of a mystery about those long ago events. Can the siblings uncover the truth about what happened to their mother?
Truths I Never Told You is an engrossing novel with a storyline that deals with postpartum depression in two different time periods. The story also touches on women’s expected roles, their limited choices and lack of autonomy during the late 1950s. The characters are three-dimensional and while it is easy to empathize with their circumstances, some are more likeable than others. Kelly Rimmer delicately broaches difficult subject matter with a great deal of sensitivity. The novel comes to a satisfying and uplifting conclusion. A well-written story that is quite thought-provoking. Highly recommend.
