“In The Truth Is Avery M. Guess ensnares her reader in a terrifying drama of intimacy’s invasions—incest, abuse, institutionalization, suicide, illness—that the reader, like the speaker, cannot escape. And yet, all the while, here too is the grace and salvation only the natural world offers us; here too is the guardian strength of ginkgo trees, thunderstorms, the Everglades, the ocean, the Miami sun. Here too is a whole woman’s body, which, once she discovers she is never separate from the loving silence on which this good earth turns, becomes something so much greater than what she endures. And so do we.” —Rebecca Gayle Howell