Truth with a Capital T (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Truth with a Capital T Karen Coats Hegedus, Bethany. Truth with a Capital T. Delacorte, 2010. 263p. Library ed. ISBN 978-0-385-90725-5 $19.99 Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-385-73837-8 $16.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-0-375-89409-1 $16.99 Ad Gr. 4-7. When Maebelle gets booted out of the gifted and talented program at her middle school, she looks forward to spending summer with her musician grandparents—until it turns out that her newly adopted cousin, Isaac, is also visiting. It doesn't help that Isaac seems to have the family talent gene—he's something of a prodigy on the trumpet—while she, apparently, does not. The blended interracial family (Isaac is black while the rest of the family is white) settles into daily life in Tweedle, Georgia, taking up residence in a stately old mansion that has been willed to Gramps. The house holds family secrets in a locked wing that Gramps is reluctant to open, but Maebelle's curiosity gets the best of her, especially when she learns that the local librarian suspects that the Underground Railroad had a stop in Tweedle. As Maebelle works through her jealousy and learns to be more open-hearted toward her cousin, she and a group of friends uncover the secrets of her family's past, a past that shows that the seeds of racial reconciliation run just as deeply in her family as talent. Emotional didacticism and feel-good historical revision are clearly the order of the day here, and the setups are strongly contrived. The story is still appealing, though, with its energetic narrative featuring likable characters doing interesting things. Hegedus builds on the tradition of codes hidden in quilts, but the rest of her story of a forbidden love affair between a heroic, open-minded master and his slave seems to be a complete fabrication designed to reinforce the present theme of [End Page 238] harmonic racial relations, which makes her assertion, through Maebelle, that truth lies in belief rather than proof somewhat troubling. Readers not overly invested in historical authenticity, however, will enjoy Maebelle's voice and relate to her mild sibling-esque rivalry as they revel in the idyll of a small-town summer with a nifty mystery to solve. Copyright © 2011 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois