Here We Lie

With this story of two very different young women, DeBoard (The Drowning Girls) portrays the lies that people tell to find acceptance and the terrible acts that powerful people casually commit. The story opens in the present with a press conference about a woman’s rape by a U.S. senator. The narrative alternates between this story line and one set in the late ’90s and early aughts, in which poor Kansas girl Megan Mazeros forms a friendship with Connecticut senator’s daughter Lauren Mabrey at all-girls Keale College. Each conceals a painful secret, and when the two are thrown together as roommates, they fall into the habit of using casual lies to paper over their differences, to hide their secrets, and even simply to amuse each other. Megan fabricates a history even more desperate than her real life to impress Lauren, the product of prep schools. Later, Lauren conceals her relationship with a young man that Megan briefly liked. The lies exacerbate the differences between the two until a horrific attack on the Mabrey family island off the coast of Maine shatters their friendship. While the rape looms in the future as a foregone conclusion, DeBoard only slowly reveals the details, so the final revelations are all the more powerful. (Jan.)