With Love, From Old Town is a monthly subscription service where members receive one new release a month that is more-often-than-not signed. We focus on debut or sophomoric novels, generally within the genre of literary fiction. You can sign up to join With Love with a 6 or 12-month subscription.

Toward the end of each month, we will get a glimpse into the selection process for With Love by sharing Program & Partnerships Coordinator Amanda’s monthly newsletter to subscription members. February’s pick was The Kindest Lie by Nancy Johnson.

Dear Readers,  

The beginning of this book takes you back to a different season of inauguration, back to 2008 when Brack Obama was elected, and his promises of hope and change were high on everyone's minds. In this context, Ruth Tuttle - an Ivy-league educated engineer - is confronted with a husband who is eager to start a family. For a successful young woman who had wanted kids, why would this be a concern?

Well, turns out, there are lots of reasons - one of which is the baby she gave birth to as a teenager and promised her family she would move on and forget about that entire experience. Only, you cannot just pretend your past does not exist. It has a funny way of catching up to you.

So, with the best intentions of making peace with the past, and in her small hometown she finds a community still rife with racism, unemployment, and futures that are leading nowhere. As she looks for the answers she seeks, a traumatic incident sends the town's racial tensions to the breaking point. What happens next sets Ruth on a collision course and takes the reader on a wild ride of the devastating divide between white and Black communities, and what it means to be a mother in contemporary America.

As always, we look forward to sharing in the excitement for this book online and on social media with the hashtag #OTBtbr (Old Town Books To Be Read) and by tagging us with @oldtownbooks. Happy reading!

With Love,

- Amanda Robinson
Program & Partnerships Coordinator

Photo and blog contribution by Amanda Robinson. Edited by Shannon McCarthy.