Excerpt from The Kindest Lie by Nancy Johnson, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

It felt like they were hurtling toward inevitability, and as guests arrived, the mood in their living room became electric. But were they setting themselves up for a fall? After all, their hope rested with a man whose name reeked of improbability with its questionable linguistic roots. Barack Hussein Obama.

She thought of Mama and Papa, her grandparents who had raised her. Even before Ruth's mother walked away from their family, the woman hadn't done much mothering, so her grandparents had taken care of her and her brother, Eli, since day one. She and Eli had entered the world with legacy status as living history with biblical names, the descendants of Hezekiah Tuttle, named for the king of Judah. Ruth smiled when she thought of an autoworker and a hotel maid setting up their grandchildren to be royalty from birth, and all she and Eli had to do was live up to their names.

Her grandmother had suggested that she be named Ruth. Papa had nodded in agreement, and so that's what her mother chose. One syllable, old school and biblical. A name that Ruth's grandmother said would at least get her to the interview. You couldn't tell Mama that an ethnically ambiguous name could only take you so far and couldn't inoculate anybody from a bigot or a bullet. Still, all that old-school planning had served Ruth well in chemical engineering, where being a woman was almost as much an anomaly as her Blackness. Like Obama, she, too, had been called articulate.

Guests jammed every square inch of the living room and kitchen, checking various television stations periodically for updated vote counts and projections. Penelope and Tess, an attorney couple who practiced intellectual property and antitrust law, respectively, brought rib tips from Lem's on the South Side, which, through bulletproof glass, served the best barbecue in town.

"Are your grandmother and brother doing a watch party tonight?" Tess asked. She and Ruth had met through a local Yale alumni group.

"I don't know. I doubt it. I'm not sure what happens in Ganton these days," Ruth said ambivalently, going from sipping her martini to draining the glass. When people heard the name Ganton, they thought of Fernwood, the auto plant that made parts for GM cars. The factory where Papa and Eli had worked for years. The town wasn't known for much else.

"You better claim your people and stop trying to be bougie." Xavier had a bad habit of dipping into every conversation. He grinned and bumped her shoulder with his.


He had jokes, but he had no way of knowing that Ganton's very soil was a trapdoor, a gateway to nothingness that few people climbed out of. The welcome sign that greeted visitors bore no warning.

"I know this is not the child of Mrs. Shaw of Jack and Jill of America, Incorporated, talking." Ruth made sure to enunciate each syllable in exaggerated fashion. Her imitation of Xavier's mother irked him, and when she needed that ammunition in an argument, she used it.

"What's this got to do with my mama or Jack and Jill?"

Penelope jumped in then. "I think what she's trying to say is that if y'all had been alive in slavery times, your people would've been in the house."

By now, they had an audience and it turned into everybody's debate. Harvey said, "See, that's what Obama wants to do. Even it out so those of us in the field can join you in the house, Xavier."

Her husband's mouth twisted at the corners, trying to stifle a laugh. "I'm telling you that we fell on hard times, too. Well, sometimes." Xavier added that qualifier knowing how pathetic he sounded, trying to weave a poor man's narrative from the finest silks of prosperity.

Ruth raised an eyebrow. "Okay, tell me this. When it rained outside, did it also rain inside your house?"

"No, but we did have that can of bacon grease on the back of the stove."

Everybody hollered. Ruth shook her head, laughter snatching her breath. "Seriously? That's about being Black or maybe just country, but not poor."

Excerpted from The Kindest Lie by Nancy Johnson. Copyright © 2021 by Nancy Johnson. Excerpted by permission of William Morrow. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.