Michael McAuliffe. No Truth Left to Tell. Greenleaf, 2020.
No Truth Left to Tell on the surface is a legal potboiler, but it is different from nearly all of them. The author says that the story is based on real events. But it is not the usual legal thriller about huge lawsuits or organized crime. The main character in No Truth Left to Tell is an attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department.
Adrien Rush is called in with FBI Special Agent Lee Mercer to Lynnwood, Louisiana, to investigate five cross burnings that happened one night in that town. The readers know that the local Ku Klux Klan leader wants to start a race war. While there are plenty of witnesses to the cross burnings, there is little evidence to prosecute anyone.
As is often true in cases like this, the local police get a lucky break. Without going into too much detail (I try to avoid spoilers), a relatively routine traffic stop of the Klan leader reveals a box with a Klan costume in the back seat. Frank Daniels soon admits his involvement. He does not implicate anyone else, but he is arrested and brought to trial.
There is a lot of local color. The writer, a former prosecuting attorney, knows his people well. We get some very moving backstories in the course of the tale, including a simultaneously moving and repulsive story about how Rush became interested in Civil Rights.
When I teach Jane Eyre, for example, that story seems to be playing out as a somewhat formulaic romance. Rochester proposes to Jane, Jane accepts. End of story? Well, I point out to the students that there are nearly 200 pages left in the book. Things are not all what they seem.
Ditto with No Truth Left to Tell. The court case wraps up, the jury convicts Daniels, and Adrien Rush even falls in love. But there are over a hundred pages left.
It gets complicated. To say much more would spoil it.
This becomes not only complicated, but fascinating, with many shades of gray.
We also learn some things about the victims of the five crosses. Some were predictable. The Federal Courthouse is one venue. Two others are a synagogue and a mosque. The building that houses the offices of the NAACP is another. The fifth is a house chosen randomly because it is located in a black neighborhood.
The sole tenant of the house is a septuagenarian widow named Nettie Wynn. Her parents built the house, and she has lived there most of her life. The night of the cross burning, part of her house catches fire and she suffers a heart attack. Because it was the only dwelling, she was the only human victim present at the burnings. The other four places had no one present at night except for the night watchmen at the courthouse.
We mostly see Nettie Wynn from Rush’s perspective. He hears about her and her family not only from her own lips but also from her granddaughter, Nicole Dubose, a staffer on The New Yorker magazine. Nettie becomes for the reader one of the noblest characters in any work of fiction.
Yeah, sure, we can admire heroes of other books for their skills, their intelligence, their courage, their strength. Nettie Wynn is different. She is wise. Clearly, McAuliffe wants the reader to realize that there can be real wisdom with age. No Truth Left to Tell is worth reading not only for the intriguing legal tangle, but in order to meet Nettie Wynn.
Yes, Atticus Finch was also an honorable character, but we know that he was based on Harper Lee’s lawyer father. I am sure Nettie Wynn is based on someone or perhaps a composite of someone McAuliffe knew. The world is better place for people like her as much as it is for motivated upholders of the law like Adrien Rush. Sure, read the book for the legal thriller and the dangers posed by lawless people. Learn about the Holocaust survivor who brings some understanding to young people after the cross burns at her synagogue. But savor No Truth Left to Tell for the nobility of Nettie Wynn.