It’s 5:30 a.m. and the beeping, bleeping alarm clock starts another day in the Single Mom Shuffle.

Downstairs, my four-year-old son is already up, chattering with my mother-in-law as she makes our breakfast. I know what you’re thinking: Somebody else is serving up your breakfast? Quit your bitching.

Um, speaking of bitching, you don’t know my mother-in-law. This will give you an idea: Every morning, Beverly makes eggs. I loathe eggs. She forbids me toast or pancakes. (“Carbs, dear.”) I love carbs.

She’s yet to forgive me for the death of her son, who joined the military as soon as he found out I was pregnant. “You can live with Mom until I’m out,” he said. “You’ll live rent-free; she’ll help with babysitting, and we’ll save money for our own home that much faster.”

Guess who never came back from Iraq? I got a folded flag and war widow status. Some days I think that’s the only thing saving my job in the public defender’s office, which is constantly threatened with layoffs.

So here I am. Stuck in Beverly’s house until I save enough from my paltry salary to get out, which by my despairing calculations will take years – unless I can get a job in a private law firm.

But that kind of firm won’t look twice at me without a high-profile case under my belt instead of the daily parade of drunken driving, disorderly conduct and public nuisance defendants who crowd my calendar.

Is it any wonder that behind my back and sometimes even to my face, people call me “Julia Geary, oh so dreary?”

Which is why this morning, after I’ve choked down more disgusting eggs, endured Beverly’s comment about what I’ve chosen to wear, and miraculously managed to get Calvin to his day-care center and myself to work on time, I didn’t exactly rush to respond to an unexpected summons from my boss.

Because how could it be anything good? Maybe, I think as I trudge down the long, long hallway from my cluttered cubbyhole to his performatively grand office, sympathy for the war widow has run dry. Is it finally my turn for one of the pink slips that get handed out every time the state imposes another round of budget cuts?

My head is so full of discouraging numbers – what if my only income ends up being my military survivor’s benefit? – that it takes a moment for what he’s telling me to sink in. He wants me to take on a new case, a big one.

You know those memes that signal astonishing good things? Rainbows and shooting stars and sparkly fireworks? All of them flashed inside my brain. My mouth stretched in what felt like my first spontaneous smile since two officers in dress blues knocked at the door to deliver their “We regret to inform you” speech.

Too good to be true, I think. Then chastise myself for having too-thoroughly internalized my oh-so-dreary reputation.

Except his next words prove me right.

My new client, the one whose successful defense will earn me fame and fortune?

Turns out he’s from Iraq, the country that robbed me of my husband and Calvin of his father. Now I’m going to be expected to sit next to him in court, place a solicitous hand on the sleeve of his jailhouse-orange jumpsuit and persuade judge and jury that he should walk free when all I want to do is make him pay for how his country ruined our lives.

And then I start digging into the facts of his case . . .

The Truth of It All, A Julia Geary Novel #1
Genre: Suspense
Release: August 2021
Purchase Link

A hot-button legal case fuels a community’s smoldering hostility–but the dark secret at its heart could set the town ablaze.

Public defender Julia Geary moves through life in simmering resentment–at her husband, a soldier killed in Iraq, leaving her a single mother; at her low-paying job; and at her overbearing mother-in law, whose home she shares. She longs for a breakout case, and it arrives when members of the high school soccer team report seeing a teammate–Iraqi refugee Sami Mohammed–assaulting a girl in the locker room.

In a town where animosity against refugees has already reached a fever pitch, Julia throws all her energy into Sami’s defense. She finds an ally in high school principal Dom Parrish, who believes Sami is innocent, and the case suddenly turns red hot.

Then she begins receiving vicious threats against her family, and a senseless act of violence leaves Sami in a coma. And finally, a crop of new evidence emerges that points to the town’s most prominent citizens and pits Julia against powerful forces set on burying the truth once and for all.

If Sami survives and Julia can prove him innocent, it will be the case of a lifetime. But now it’s her life that’s on the line.

About the author
Gwen Florio is the author of the Lola Wicks crime series, called “gutsy” by the New York Times; as well as Silent Hearts, a standalone novel set in Afghanistan; and the Nora Best crime series (Severn House). The Truth of It All (Aug. 9, Crooked Lane) launches a new series featuring public defender Julia Geary. Florio’s novels have won a High Plains Book Award and the Pinckley Prize for debut novel and were finalists for the International Thriller Award and Silver Falchion Award. She lives in Missoula, Montana.

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