Book Review: BIG LIES IN A SMALL TOWN by Diane Chamberlain

Title: BIG LIES IN A SMALL TOWN

Author: Diane Chamberlain
Publisher: St Martin's Press
Read: September 2019

Expected publication: 14 January 2020

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Book Description:

North Carolina, 2018: Morgan Christopher's life has been derailed. Taking the fall for a crime she did not commit, she finds herself serving a three-year stint in the North Carolina Women's Correctional Center. Her dream of a career in art is put on hold—until a mysterious visitor makes her an offer that will see her released immediately. Her assignment: restore an old post office mural in a sleepy southern town. Morgan knows nothing about art restoration, but desperate to leave prison, she accepts. What she finds under the layers of grime is a painting that tells the story of madness, violence, and a conspiracy of small town secrets.

North Carolina, 1940: Anna Dale, an artist from New Jersey, wins a national contest to paint a mural for the post office in Edenton, North Carolina. Alone in the world and desperate for work, she accepts. But what she doesn't expect is to find herself immersed in a town where prejudices run deep, where people are hiding secrets behind closed doors, and where the price of being different might just end in murder.

What happened to Anna Dale? Are the clues hidden in the decrepit mural? Can Morgan overcome her own demons to discover what exists beneath the layers of lies? 

My musings:

I really love mysteries that involve separate timelines, transversing history, especially ones that involve a mysterious object, such as a piece of art, an old manuscript or a journal. The struggle I often encounter though is that inexorably one timeline or central character ends up being more compelling than the other. Not so here – Diane Chamberlain has managed to pull off one of the most difficult tasks a writer can do, which is making each of her timelines and characters equally interesting, which made for a wonderful reading experience on my part. I found myself reading slower in order to be able to savour this book longer!

Morgan, who has been serving a jail sentence for a crime she did not commit, gets a chance at early release if she agrees to restore an old mural from 1939, which had been painted by a mysterious young artist called Anna Dale for display at the Edenton Post Office. As Morgan cleans the grime off the canvas she comes across some mysterious elements in the painting that leave her puzzled -  what do they mean? Was the artist indeed as crazy as some people claim? And what has happened to Anna Dale, who seems to have vanished off the face of the earth after the completion of the painting in 1940? The mural itself never made it to its intended location on the post office wall, but ended up in the basement of a famous – recently deceased – artist, the very man who has asked for Morgan to restore it. The more Morgan invests in the restoration of the painting, the more she wonders about the girl who painted it.

In the second timeline we get to know a young and spirited Anna Dale, the creator of the mural. She arrives in Edenton a stranger, and will soon find out that the small Southern town holds some secrets and challenges she has been ill prepared for.

As I said previously, I really liked each of the female leads and very quickly became invested in their fates. I, too, was puzzled by the things Morgan discovered in the painting, and curious to find out their meaning, I was not quite prepared for the heart wrenching journey to get there! Chamberlain is obviously very familiar with her setting, as it literally sprang to life on the pages and felt very real to me, from its people to the abandoned warehouse Anna uses as her studio. Chamberlain addresses a lot of issues in her latest novel, including mental illness, racism, prejudice, trauma, small town politics etc, but manages to blend these seamlessly into her narrative without appearing to be preaching or hammering any of the messages home. Whilst the mystery of the painting is the centre of the story, this really is more a story about two young women living decades apart and connected by events outside their control. I was fully emotionally invested in this tale, even though I admit that the ending was just a tiny bit of a stretch for me.

Summary:

All in all, BIG LIES IN A SMALL TOWN is an engaging historical mystery spanning two separate timelines connected by a mysterious piece of art. Featuring two interesting and strong female leads, each timeline was as compelling as the other, making this an enjoyable and unputdownable read for me. I really enjoyed Chamberlain’s writing, and have already added a few of her older books to my ever growing TBR pile.

Thank you to Netgalley and St Martin's Press for the free electronic copy of this novel and for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.