The Truth in the Lie by R. Chase Raiford

Amazon.com link for The Truth in The Lie

From the back of the book:
The Truth in The Lie will transport you into the past during a time that our nation lit the torch of freedom and began its long voyage into the present, where you are currently positioned to carry that torch into the future. This novel will “time warp” you into the life of a slave who fought in the Revolutionary War. Yes, you will live Parker Roger’s life with him. You will gain insight into “his mind in his time” and walk with him in his 18th century shoes. You will experience his courage, moral awareness, religious spirituality, kindness, love, hate, suffering and understanding as he fought for the independence of a nation that denied him his freedom as a man. When he, his friends, and his family suffer, you will suffer with them. This compelling novel offers fertile reading for both blacks and whites caught up in our continuing struggle in this country for racial equality and racial justice.

My Review:
The Truth in The Lie is a story that takes the reader on an imaginative journey back in time to slavery and the revolutionary war. I found it difficult to read because much of it is written in dialect. Here is a short excerpt to give an example:
“Same heah, boy. Yo mama turned to da Afican rules. Just cause she born heah don’t mean she be of heah. Son, what is blessed, what be right or wrong depend on who you be, whea you be, and what da laws of yo pepas be. Dat be yo law. If da whites don’t lets you be part of dat law what dey has, you has to use da law what you knows and has.”

This is a novel about Parker, a mixed race former slave, who lived as a white man. He married a white woman and had white children. His daughter, Patience, married a white man, but had a black baby. This intriguing story of this man’s lie was bogged down and almost lost when the story goes back in time. His unresolved dishonesty caused dramatic consequences. It is too bad that Patience’s story was overlooked. There were quite a few unresolved questions for me in Parker’s character and what he taught his children, but discussing them here could be a “spoiler”.

Other than the dialect, the book is well written and interesting. The tone of the book is not that slavery is bad, but that all white Americans in the south were bad and American founding fathers were despots. The “n” word is used liberally in different forms, and the book has a tendency to preach.