The Truth Of The Matter is the sequel to
The Evidence Against Her, Robb Forman Dew's multi-generational saga about the Scofield family of Washburn, Ohio. It's 1947 and Agnes Scofield has been a widow for over a decade since her husband's mysterious death in an auto accident. A combination of World War II and college had drawn all her children away from home and she'd found herself alone for the first time. No longer feeling necessary in their lives, she'd begun to discover her sense of self and physical and emotional pleasures she'd denied herself for years. She has a physical affair with a man she might have loved at one time. Her children are slowly migrating back to Ohio and starting families of their own. They're sure they know the mother to whom they're returning, but only she knows how wrong they are.
The Truth Of The Matter has received positive reviews with the Seattle Times saying, "Dew, who won the National Book Award for an earlier book (
Dale Loves Sophie to Death) re-creates the midcentury Midwest with graceful and well-considered detail. But even more impressive is her precisely shaded portrait of one middle-age woman's heart, which burns with incandescent passion yet somehow remains primly invisible to the people who think they know her best."
