This Is Why We Lied

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Chapter 5

Chapters 6-9

Chapters 10-13

Chapters 14-17

Chapters 18-23

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Themes

What Makes a Family

Throughout the Will Trent series, Karin Slaughter explores the concept of family through Will’s complicated history and relationships. This Is Why We Lied focuses particularly on the evolution of Will’s family and contrasts it with the McAlpine family. In doing so, the novel explores the definition of family and what makes a family successful.

Mercy McAlpine is a mother, and both Will and Faith connect with her because of it. Like Mercy, Will’s mother had him when she was quite young and struggled with substance use disorder and a legacy of abuse. Faith feels a connection with Mercy even after her death, reflecting that “Mercy had been a mother. Not just a mother, but a mother like Faith. They had both given birth to sons when they were barely more than children themselves” (257). The only difference between them that Faith can see is that “Faith had been lucky that her family had supported her. Without their strength holding her up, she could’ve just as easily ended up like Mercy McAlpine” (257). Faith admits that she and Mercy seem to be attracted to the same kind of man when she describes Dave as a “reprehensible abuser” who was good-looking “in a bedraggled, high-school-prom-gone-to-seed kind of way. He’d probably slept with every other woman in town and had a $20,000 gaming set-up inside his rented trailer. Which was to say, exactly Faith’s type” (230). However, unlike Mercy, Faith received support from her family and, later, from her found family at the GBI, the same family that Will sees as the secret behind his own success.

Will’s family has evolved throughout his life as he connected with people who loved and supported him. Over the years, Amanda has looked out for him, and Faith and Sara both support him in his work. He hasn’t always been a model citizen, though: In fact, he spent “his nineteenth [birthday] in jail, and by his twentieth, he was enrolled in college” (448). Will faced the additional challenge of succeeding despite having dyslexia: “The difference between Will and Dave was that someone had given Will a break” (448). He contrasts his experience with family, and its most recent evolution in his marriage to Sara, with that of Dave, who “used to talk about how being part of a family would solve all of his problems. And here he is with everything he wanted, and he’s fucked it all up” (155). Seeing Dave after all these years shows Will just how successful he has been in building a new family; the newest addition to his family, Sara, tells him, “My love, I’m your family. […] I will go where you go. I will stay where you stay. Your people are my people, and my people are yours” (116). Will and his family starkly contrast with the abusive McAlpine family, and by juxtaposing the two, the novel shows that those who survive and thrive despite trauma have support from a network of family, whether it be biological or found.

The Impact of Lies and Secrets

This Is Why We Lied reveals layer after layer of lies and secrets to expose the full truth about the McAlpine family and the lodge. The novel emphasizes the ubiquity of lies when Will says, “People lied. They hid things. They kept secrets. They shared others” (160). In the novel’s world, some lies are relatively harmless, as when Paul lies about his name or Sara and Will lie about their professions. Dave even presents lying as necessary: He tells Will, “This is why we lie [about the abuse]. You tell this shit to a normal person, they can’t take it” (198). These less extreme lies show how lying is ubiquitous but can lead to or hide deeper lies and secrets.

The McAlpine family’s secrets run deeper than Will could guess, but the fact that Dave has given almost everyone in the family nicknames hints that there’s more to these people than meets the eye. For example, while “Papa” and “Bitty” sound friendly, familial, and harmless, in truth, Cecil and Imogene are relentlessly abusive and manipulative. Although Sara immediately sizes Cecil up as a “self-righteous blowhard,” she doesn’t realize the extent of the gap between Cecil’s “Papa” persona and his true self. The novel’s events gradually peel the layers back even further to reveal a father who raped and killed his daughter’s best friend and then framed her for the murder. However, even before the revelation about the extent of Cecil and Bitty’s abuse, the investigators note the deceit in their character; for example, Faith realizes that Bitty is a “world-class liar” within moments of meeting her.

Before the final truth of that abuse becomes evident, however, the novel reveals the crime and embezzlement that permeates McAlpine Lodge. Christopher and Chuck are making moonshine and bootlegging it on the property and in the surrounding region. Even Mercy is in on the operation, not only selling the moonshine under luxury labels for outsized costs but also laundering the money for the operation. In addition, Mercy reveals that Bitty has been embezzling money from the lodge for years. However, the final layer of secrets is the most damaging, including Cecil and Bitty’s abuse of every child on the property. The novel’s final pages reveal that both Christopher and Dave knew Mercy wasn’t responsible for Gabbie’s death but chose to keep Cecil’s secret. Throughout the story, the novel first illustrates the widespread, innocuous lies and then shows that they often peel back to reveal layers of darker, more dangerous secrets.

How the Past Affects the Present

This Is Why We Lie features a cast of characters whose personal histories resonate throughout their lives, affecting their present decisions and relationships. The McAlpine family, around whom the mystery revolves, reveals a deeply dysfunctional and abusive dynamic that affects every member. This abuse is not physical, as in Cecil’s abuse of Mercy, but also psychological and sexual, as in Bitty’s abuse of Dave and Jon.

The novel thus explores generational trauma and abuse within the McAlpine family and how the cycle of abuse continues to resonate, affecting even people outside the family. When the novel reveals Jon as Mercy’s murderer, it also reveals that he is the latest one who experienced the trauma of abuse. Mercy herself understands this when she sees Jon, at the moment of her death, “looking down at her. Not with sadness or pity, but with a kind of detachment she had seen in her brother, her father, her husband, her mother, herself. Her son was a McAlpine through and through” (438). Mercy fully understands the generational nature of the abuse just before she dies, realizing that while she was trying to protect him from the family, he was slowly becoming one of them. Jon’s character shows how abuse can continue for generations and even jump over a generation: A grandmother is typically a figure representing familial love, trustworthiness, and kind care, not someone who perpetrates child abuse.

In addition, the novel explores the effect of the past on the present through Will and his team. Because of his background and upbringing, Will, in particular, understands how deeply the past impacts the present. He also knows that it isn’t just about the severity of the trauma in your past but that everyone experiences it and deals with it differently:

They all tried to heal their damage in different ways. Binging and purging. Night terrors. Lashing out. Some couldn’t stop cutting themselves. Some disappeared into a pipe or a bottle. Some couldn’t control their rage. Others became masters of the awkward silence (52).

Even Sara, who admits that she has led a relatively safe and stable life, carries trauma that affects her present. Her first husband was a police officer who “underestimated a suspect and ended up dead because of it” (184). Even though Sara, too, works in law enforcement, the danger that Will’s job puts him in creates “naked fear” in her. The character of Sara is a reminder that each event in one’s life leaves a mark: The loss of her first husband affects her second marriage to Will. Thus, the novel’s characters have experienced a range of different traumas, illustrating how the past resonates in the present in large and small ways.