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A conversation with Nancy Johnson

Join us on Zoom for a conversation with author Nancy Johnson.

This event will be broadcast live on Zoom. Registration and an email address are required to receive the link to participate. 

Order your copy of The Kindest Lie from Mac’s Backs – Books on Coventry: macsbacks.com/book/9780063005631

About the author:

A native of Chicago’s South Side, Nancy Johnson worked for more than a decade as an Emmy-nominated, award-winning television journalist at CBS and ABC affiliates in markets nationwide. A graduate of Northwestern University and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Nancy lives in downtown Chicago and manages brand communications for a large nonprofit. Nancy’s work has been published in O, The Oprah Magazine and has received support from the Hurston/Wright Foundation, Tin House, and Kimbilio Fiction. 

Her debut novel, The Kindest Lie, has been named one of the most anticipated books of 2021 by Marie Claire and PopSugar. Powerful and revealing, The Kindest Lie captures the heartbreaking divide between Black and white communities and offers both an unflinching view of motherhood in contemporary America and the never-ending quest to achieve the American Dream.

In 2008, the inauguration of President Barack Obama ushers in a new kind of hope. In Chicago, Ruth Tuttle, an Ivy-League educated Black engineer, is married to a man eager to start a family, but Ruth never got over the baby she gave birth to and left behind when she was a teenager. To move forward, Ruth must make peace with the past, so she returns home to the Indiana factory town of her youth, finding unemployment, racism, and despair. As Ruth digs into the past, she unexpectedly befriends Midnight, a young white boy adrift and looking for connection. Just as Ruth is about to uncover a burning family secret, a traumatic incident strains the town’s already searing racial tensions, sending Ruth and Midnight on a collision course that could upend both their lives.