Big Lies in a Small Town

Big Lies In A Small Town by Diane Chamberlain. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2019. 353 pages. ***** 

North Carolina, 2018: Morgan Christopher is serving a three-year sentence in the North Carolina Women's Correctional Center for a crime that she didn't commit. She took the fall for her law student boyfriend, the man of her dreams, while he left her at the scene of the crime and ran away.  All of her plans are on hold while she tries to survive prison life. Her life takes a change for the better when a woman and her lawyer show up with an offer that Morgan can't refuse. If Morgan agrees to restore an old post office mural, she will be immediately released from prison.   Morgan knows nothing about art restoration, but desperate to leave prison, she accepts.

North Carolina, 1940: Anna Dale, an artist from New Jersey, wins a national contest to paint a mural for the post office in Edenton, North Carolina.  Her mother recently died and Anna accepts. Anna soon finds herself immersed in the norms of the South and life in a small town. Prejudice runs deep and Anna naively thinks she can mentor a talented young black man and potential artist. The townspeople believe that a local portrait artist should have been chosen to paint the mural and resentments build until violence erupts and changes the course of Anna's life.

Told in the alternating voices of Morgan and Anna, Chamberlain weaves a spellbinding, disturbing story of betrayal, love, and friendship. I was immediately drawn into the book and loved every second of the story. Definitely a story that I will recommend to family and friends. Chamberlain gets better and better at her masterful plot lines. The characters came to life for me and I didn't want the book to end. Bravo!

I received an ecopy for a review.

Books by Chamberlain
Dream Daughter
The Stolen Daughter
Pretending to Dance

Diane Chamberlain is the New York Times, USA Today and Sunday Times bestselling author of 26 novels published in more than twenty languages. Influenced by her former career as a social worker and psychotherapist, she writes suspenseful stories that touch both heart and mind.

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