First published 2001
Bill, a small-town newspaper reporter, finds himself caught between competing versions of reality when a local story spirals beyond his control. The boundaries between fact and fiction blur as he navigates the pressures of journalism in a community where everyone has secrets to protect. Collins places his protagonist at the center of a web of lies and half-truths, forcing him to confront not only the stories he tells others but the ones he tells himself. As Bill struggles to separate truth from fabrication, he discovers that the act of reporting the news inevitably changes both the reporter and the reported. The novel examines how truth becomes a commodity in the hands of those who claim to preserve it, and how the keepers of that truth must reckon with their own complicity in its distortion.
Genres: fiction, literary-fiction, mystery, contemporary, thriller
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: deception, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Small Town
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
297 pages · Paperback · W&n