The Truth of the Matter

Starred review from September 5, 2005
Dew returns to the Scofields of Washburn, Ohio, for a minutely observed, lucid and lyrical examination of family ties, the second in a trilogy (The Evidence Against Her
). By the early days of WWII, widow Agnes Scofield (her husband, Warren, died in a car accident in 1930) has raised four children. Financially pressed and emotionally repressed, Agnes has learned to rely on her schoolteacher's salary, her lifelong friends Lily and Robert Butler, and her ability to keep her thoughts to herself. The Scofield household is first disrupted when the now adult children leave to join the war effort, and then again when they return with spouses, children and ideas of their own. Dew details inner turmoil with delicacy, wit and precision; she focuses on life's ordinary moments, studying them from various points of view and revealing layers of feeling. A Fourth of July picnic gets rehashed by town gossips; family myths are traced to their unlikely origins. As Washburn's postwar expansion casts the Scofield home into shabby respectability, the Scofields likewise change with the times, and Agnes returns to the Maine vacation house of the first novel to come to terms with truths she has spent a lifetime avoiding, in a moving yet unsentimental culmination to a remarkable personal journey.

October 15, 2005
In Book Two of her trilogy (after "The Evidence Against Her"), Dew investigates how even the members of a close-knit family cannot truly know one another. Agnes Scofield has raised her children as a widow, having lost husband Warren in a car accident in 1930. This loss permeates the way in which Agnes recalls her life -she does not feel, she represses -and affects the relationships she has with her children. During World War II, her children leave home, and Agnes adjusts to single life only to have to readjust when they return to their small Ohio town with spouses and children in tow. The family ultimately finds the homecoming unsettling, as if they are just meeting one another for the first time. Dew's plain writing highlights the characters' inner lives and the wartime environment, yet it carries the reader along effortlessly. What could have been a rather dull premise is transformed by the attention not just to the details, but to the right details. Recommended for medium to large public and academic libraries." -Amy Ford, St. Mary's Cty. Lib., Lexington Park, MD"

Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2005
As the widow of the prominent Warren Scofield, Agnes and her children are the closest thing to royalty her small Ohio town has. The well-loved Warren (who secretly suffered from a bipolar disorder) died years ago in a mysterious car accident. Since then, Agnes has lived for her children and to protect their memories of their father. As her children grow up, Agnes finds herself at a crossroads, unsure of who she is and how her life should be lived. It's possible that praise and criticism of this novel could be the same phrase: "It's very realistic." Nothing much happens in the small town, or in Agnes' life. Her children grow up and move out. World War II intrudes in their livesin minor ways. Mysterious family secrets are hinted at and then dropped. Even the marriage of Agnes' daughter to a former lover of Agnes' does little to disturb the cozy world. A gentle, soothing read that manages to be moving in its stillness.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)