ABOUT:
Los Angeles lawyer Lena Antinori has dedicated her career to fighting discrimination, including for the LGBTQ community, but her own family’s secret haunts her. At thirteen years old, she made the startling discovery that her father, Frank, was gay and her mother, Teresa, knew. Fearing social stigma, Teresa instituted a code of silence meant to protect their Italian Catholic family—a code Lena adhered to for decades.
Now, Frank plans to marry his partner, and he wants Lena to help plan the wedding. Lena is torn between maintaining loyalty to her mother and supporting her father’s newfound happiness. As her father’s wedding approaches, Lena learns her childhood wounds run deeper than she thought, and failing to heal them might sentence her to a life of hypocrisy and the inability to discover the true meaning of coming out.
Told by Lena in the present, and her parents in the past, Everything We Thought Was True examines how the truth doesn’t set you free until you embrace it.
PRAISE & REVIEWS:
“A masterfully written ‘love is love’ story told during a time when freedom came with rules. Everything We Thought Was True is a love story but also a story of fear and disbelief. Everyone pays a price in this family that loses almost everything before they find not only themselves, but each other. A story of secrets, lies, triumph, and joy by a debut author who bears watching.” ―Barbara Conrey, USA Today bestselling author of Nowhere Near Goodbye and My Secret to Keep
“Mining her own family history as inspiration, Lisa Montanaro has crafted a heart-warming and emotionally complex debut novel that masterfully explores themes of guilt, anger, forgiveness and ultimately redemption, as an Italian American family struggles with a secret that threatens to tear them apart. Written with compassion and grace, this is a story that will resonate with anyone who has struggled to come to terms with the complexities of the people they love the most.” ―Maggie Smith, Author of the award-winning Truth and Other Lies
“Introspective and emotional, bringing you deep into the characters’ feelings, Lisa Montanaro gifts us an important and engrossing novel for all, no matter your sexual orientation. Brava, Ms. Montanaro.” ―Linda Rosen, Award-winning author of The Emerald Necklace, Sisters of the Vine and The Disharmony of Silence
“Lisa Montanaro brings together the emotional elements of truth, family, and tradition in a story that uses love as the baseline. Everything We Thought Was True is an ode to the often-painful journey people take to be who they truly are.” ―Sierra Godfrey, Author of A Very Typical Family
“Lisa Montanaro’s carefully drawn characters are our neighbors—they are us—and they demonstrate a path to face and overcome the types of challenges that threaten to tear us apart. Refreshingly empathetic and self-reflective, Everything We Thought Was True is a novel of family and forgiveness perfect for our time.” ―Jennifer Klepper,USA Today bestselling author of Unbroken Threads and The Last Road Trip
“Lisa Montanaro’s powerful first novel sweeps effortlessly across decades, pulling the reader along with exquisite precision. As we bear witness to the family’s hidden secrets, peeled back a layer at a time, we are reminded of how hard truths from decades earlier continue to haunt us, no matter how much we’d like to think we’ve moved on. Everything We Thought Was True, evocative and unblinking, is both a coming-of-age classic and masterfully timely and topical.” ―Alan Winnikoff, Author of Not Sleeping and The Weekend
AUTHOR VISITS:
Visits with this author are available via Adventures by the Book!