The Truth of the Matter

Widowed years before by her husband Warren's early death in an icy morning car crash, Agnes Scofield has grown into a woman of fierce and unconquerable independence. It is the 1940s in Washburn, Ohio, and the war has finally ended. Agnes' children are returning home - from Washington, D.C., from soldiering abroad-and bringing an end to Agnes' solitude in the great old family house. And to Agnes this means that she must accustom herself once more to her children's presence, to their notions of what kind of mother she has been for all these years. Hanging over the day-to-day events of life at Scofields are Agnes' constant memories of Warren, her feelings of devotion and resentment, and her long time suspicion that his untimely departure may not have been an accident. In this meditative novel of love and trust, lust and deception, Dew illuminates the small events that make up a lifetime. She is a marvel of a writer, and her spare and precise prose builds a world of startlingly lush and vivid detail.