“Not all lies are the same,” says Kristine Anderson, author of the award-winning “Crooked Truth.” And Lucas Webster, the 15-year-old main character of her historical novel, comes to that realization after he is tasked with caring for his severely mentally handicapped uncle in the late 1940s.
Dr. Kristine Anderson, author of the award-winning “Crooked Truth,” will be the Meet the Author presenter at the Grove Event Center, 252 Swint Avenue, SE, in Milledgeville on June 11, at 10 a.m. Following the book talk, Visit Milledgeville arranged a Trolley tour of the Central State Hospital campus at 11:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. Between talk and tour, attendees can visit one or more popular tourist sites. Tickets for the book talk are $8 per person; $25 for the book talk and trolley tour. Space is limited, register online with Georgia Writers Museum or www.georgiawritersmsuem.org. Here is a bit of the book’s back story.
Almost 15 years ago, Anderson heard an intriguing story at a family cookout in South Georgia about a middle-aged local couple who had an unexpected son with Down Syndrome in the early 1930’s. He didn’t go to school and his older brother constantly called him ‘Dummy’ and abused him physically. The name-calling and abuse got worse as the boys got older. One hot afternoon, things blew up and a violent shooting took place. While Anderson jotted down notes on a napkin, the story took hold of her. She couldn’t forget it since she had worked with a young boy with Down Syndrome in a public school in the Atlanta area.
After she retired from the classroom, she developed her napkin notes from the family cookout into a novel set in the fictitious community of Crisscross, Georgia. She had the basis of her plotline, but she added a few more characters, including Lucas Webster, her protagonist and narrator. Though she’d had some experience freelancing for newspapers and magazines, she worked on her manuscript for over four years. As her characters became more real, she completed numerous revisions and changed her title to Crooked Truth. Looking back, she says, “It was a long process and I had two endings before I wrote the one that felt right.”
When the manuscript was finished, she began to look for a publisher. She wrote lots of query letters, but she never found someone to represent her. Then, at the eleventh hour, she submitted her manuscript to Mercer University Press for consideration for their 2018 Ferrol Sams Fiction Award. Six months later, she received the award for the best work “that speaks to the human condition in a Southern context.”
Anderson, who still has her original napkin notes from the cookout, was nominated for the 2021 Georgia Author of the Year Award in the debut novel category. She is currently working on a follow-up novel to “Crooked Truth.” It involves several characters from her first book and takes place in the 1960s.
- Contributed