Annie Barrows once again evokes the charm and eccentricity of a small town filled with extraordinary characters. Her new novel, The Truth According to Us, brings to life an inquisitive young girl, her beloved aunt, and the alluring visitor who changes the course of their destiny forever. In the summer of 1938, Layla Beck’s father, a United States senator, cuts off her allowance and demands that she find employment on the Federal Writers’ Project, a New Deal jobs program. Within days, Layla finds herself far from her accustomed social whirl, assigned to cover the history of the remote mill town of Macedonia, West Virginia, and destined, in her opinion, to go completely mad with boredom. But once she secures a room in the home of the unconventional Romeyn family, she is drawn into their complex world and soon discovers that the truth of the town is entangled in the thorny past of the Romeyn dynasty. At the Romeyn house, twelve-year-old Willa is desperate to learn everything in her quest to acquire her favorite virtues of ferocity and devotion—a search that leads her into a thicket of mysteries, including the questionable business that occupies her charismatic father and the reason her adored aunt Jottie remains unmarried. Layla’s arrival strikes a match to the family veneer, bringing to light buried secrets that will tell a new tale about the Romeyns. As Willa peels back the layers of her family’s past, and Layla delves deeper into town legend, everyone involved is transformed—and their personal histories completely rewritten.


安妮．貝蘿絲再次透過一個充滿奇人異士的小鎮，營造出其中的魅力與奇異。貝蘿絲這本新作將三個角色刻畫得栩栩如生：一味好奇心旺盛的年輕女孩、這位女孩摯愛的阿姨、與一位永遠改變他們命運的迷人旅客。1938 年的夏天，萊拉．貝克身為參議員的父親，不再給她零用錢，要她根據羅斯福新政就業政策中的聯邦寫作計畫找份工作，上班後沒幾天，萊拉發現自己已遠離了原本熟悉的社交生活，奉派去紀錄西維吉尼亞州馬其頓郡一座工廠林立的偏僻小鎮，萊拉心想自己去的是一個令人無聊到發慌的地方，等到萊拉在不拘傳統的羅米音家住下來後，卻對其複雜的世界著迷不已。不久，萊拉就發現，小鎮背後隱藏的真相與羅米音家族過去統治的王朝息息相關。羅米音家 12 歲的薇拉窮盡全力努力學習，希望成為一個剛強忠誠的人，但她的學習之路卻讓她踏進了一叢謎團，包括她那充滿魅力的父親詭異的事業、以及為何她敬愛的賈蒂阿姨一直未婚。而萊拉的到來就像一根燒去羅米音家面紗的火柴，讓深埋已久的祕密重見天日，也將述說一段羅米音家族不為人知的故事。在薇拉一層層揭開羅米音家族過去的祕密時，萊拉也正深入探究小鎮的傳說，最後牽扯其中的人都改變了，人生也完全改寫。