The Truth Now by Anthony Caplan

The main character of The Truth Now, Sid, is a former football star who was recently freed from jail after serving nineteen years for a murder he may or may not have committed. He has almost little money, no family, and no friends. His attire is unsuitable, and his only pair of shoes—his worn-out jail boots—are uncomfortable.

What to do with a stray dog he recently came across in a park is one of the first decisions he must make. For someone who hasn’t made decisions in a while, this can be a difficult choice. Sid consequently finds himself in a kind of family arrangement with the dog and a woman who may or may not be the mother of the child.

They love him and he seems to love them back, but it is too taxing for Sid to settle down. His problematic past and his demons keep pulling at him, and he sets out on a haphazard journey through the U.S. Northeast.

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As Sid continues on his journey, he meets a variety of people and makes both wise and foolish choices. There are immigrants, members of the working class, drug users, recovering addicts, millennials with dubious fortunes, people from his past, a long-lost relative, and perhaps a child abuser.

They all seem to be as lost and broken as Sid, if not the majority of them. All of these meetings are described in vivid and moving ways, even though not all of them are equally credible or satisfactorily ended. They paint a disturbing picture of the serious cracks in the American Dream when taken together.

We get glimpses of now forgotten, formerly prosperous small towns, of semi-deserted malls full of boarded-up stores, of the harsh lives of working-class people who can barely eke out a living, of the widespread use of drugs, and of once-promising football players whose bodies and minds were wrecked.

As this line implies, there is immense prosperity in America as well, but Sid finds it to be shaky: “There were individuals from well-heated houses filling up their immaculate automobiles and putting down some pleasantly hot muffins on the go. Sid observed that the skin holding everything together was incredibly thin. Wealth is fickle and deceptive, just like many other things in this book.

The arrival of Covid-19 toward the end of the narration, despite the fact that this is not a pandemic novel, presents the characters with fresh difficulties. I enjoyed Sid’s mental elegy to indispensable workers as he strolls around a deserted Boston in particular.

Four short stories about historical figures from various corners of the world are interspersed with Sid’s story. They initially appear to have no connection to the main plot, and for some, they might interfere with the narration. But as the story progresses, the reader discovers that these folks, like Sid, are wanderers and seekers.

All were joined in a journey away from home, he claims, “the garish and the lovely, the luxurious and the plain.” The vignettes mostly made sense to me, and they made me think of both the connections between the novellas in Cloud Atlas and the vignettes in Exit West.

About The Book

Released from the correctional facility after 19 years, Sid Green searches the streets and rewinds the strange yet familiar voices in his head for an answer to the question that pursues him like a jail warden of the soul. Did he do it? Did he kill Meg, the love of his life, the perfect girl, his high school lover and partner in crime?

To find out, Sid follows the clues to where the faces of the people he loves match the stories he hears from the wind. In this inspirational and action-packed story, the latest from Anthony Caplan, we run like a river through the forests and towns of northern New England and Sid’s dreams and visions of an interconnected past and present, as he pursues freedom and escapes justice.