Syrian American author Ream Shukairy’s sophomore novel Six Truths and a Lie is a mystery crime thriller in which six Muslim teenagers suspected of a terrorist attack face pressure from the press, the police, and their own families to turn against one another. When the teens are picked up by cops after an oil rig explosion on the Fourth of July, they experience Islamophobic paranoia from authorities, are denied basic rights upon their detention, and are kept in the dark about their situations. As new evidence is revealed and investigators threaten to drag the teens’ own secrets into the spotlight, the youths must decide where their loyalties lie. In a conversation with PW, Shukairy spoke about being a Muslim writer in America, her desire to highlight myriad Muslim American experiences, and the differences between her latest novel and her contemporary debut, The Next New Syrian Girl.
What inspired your pivot from realistic contemporary to crime thriller, and how did developing your sophomore novel compare to writing your debut?
Getting to write a thriller was great, since it’s more of what I like to do. I’ve always felt that my writing was more geared toward thrillers and fast-paced narratives, so my debut, The Next New Syrian Girl, was actually my first time writing a contemporary novel. It was honestly so wonderful to do because I was writing outside my wheelhouse and using first-person narration, so I really got to know my characters.
When I was writing Six Truths and a Lie, I got to pull back and use third person to write more about the plot and the characters’ situations and how those things go together. I think if this was a different book, I would’ve had a more difficult time puzzling everything together. The outline for Six Truths and a Lie and the first draft were written so quickly, and I didn’t take any big breaks in between writing, which might be why everything flows so well. I just let my characters lead me; whoever’s voice stood out to me in that moment was the voice I used to tell that part of the story.
For this book, I was really inspired by the Black Lives Matter protests and the feeling that the world was changing. So, I wanted to talk more generally about the experience of being Muslim in America than I did in The Next New Syrian Girl, which was specifically about being Syrian. I wanted to deliver a broader story about how it is to be an American who also happens to be Muslim in different communities, because all the characters in Six Truths and a Lie come from different backgrounds.
Why did you decide to pull back in this way and to write from so many different perspectives?
My initial thought for writing Six Truths and a Lie in third person was because while I am Muslim, and the protagonists are Muslim, I don’t experience life the same way they do. My characters are Black, Afghan, Pakistani American, Palestinian Arab American, and Sudani American, and I don’t share their experiences. I didn’t want to put myself in their heads, so to speak, from a first-person perspective because I don’t know all the aspects of their life. So, while I spoke to many people from different backgrounds, and I had many authenticity readers, I still felt like it would be too much for me to take their position and tell their story as if it were my own.
I also think it gives space for readers who do share more of each individual character’s background to fill in the blanks for themselves because they know more about what it feels like to be that person. I really wanted to talk about the Muslim perspective and share not only how fractured our communities can be but also how much we’re able to come together.
Was highlighting how fractured but also how communal Muslim communities can be what inspired the overarching theme of loyalty in Six Truths and a Lie?
It absolutely was. I think the main driver for me was feeling like we are a community that is held together by our faith, but that is constantly being pulled in different directions, because we are always pointing out our differences. It was a very personal thing for me to talk about. We feel this fracturing in high-intensity ways, like in the book, but we also feel it in our everyday. Who gets supported by which communities and who supports what background? There’s a lot of discrimination within the Muslim community, particularly with colorism, and I felt that this was something important that I wanted to address with this book. I wanted to emphasize these issues in such a way that it was a big deal—it could be this high stakes if we continue to not support each other even with the small things.
Why did you set the inciting incident of Six Truths and a Lie on a fictional beach?
I felt that I was handling a very sensitive topic, this idea of terrorism. I was also very scared that, had I set it in a real location, it would be something that people are like, “Of course, here’s a Muslim author writing about a terrorist attack.” I really wanted to avoid any link to specific places.
I definitely feel that when somebody reads the book blurb, they might think that it’s about the terrorist attack. But when they read the book, they’ll realize that, no, this is more about the characters and how these events are affecting them. This is about dismantling prejudice, but it’s not about that in a way where I’m giving too much emphasis on the idea of terrorism and whether that’s what’s actually happening. I’m really focusing more on where this accusation is leading these characters and what’s happening to them. Though it’s very, very obvious, I think, that it’s set in Southern California—I was inspired by several beaches that I’ve been to, and I write about the landscape of Los Angeles and Orange County in a way that’s very authentic, because that’s where I grew up, and I love that. But I just didn’t want anybody to tie the events of Six Truths and a Lie to anything specific.
Six Truths and a Lie by Ream Shukairy. Little, Brown, $18.99 Mar. 12 ISBN 978-0-316564-59-5
