A Beautiful Truth

A tight, clean and unmarked copy-" A novel about the simple truths that transcend species, about the meaning of family, the lure of belonging, and the capacity for survival Walt and Judy are deeply in love, but Judy longs for a child and finds that life is holding few surprises. Walt measures all beauty against that of Judy but doesn't want her eyes to get any sadder. They stay side by side and search for distractions, realizing they may never have a family. On a day when hope seems low, Walt finds an unexpected opportunity in the pages of Life magazine. Soon they are welcoming Looee, born in Sierra Leone, into their home in the hills of Vermont, where they come to regard him as their son. Looee is a hurricane in clothes; the house is torn apart. Judy asks questions of herself and is judged by friends and strangers. But the three of them eventually find their rhythm and settle into their own version of love and life between four walls. Until the night their unique family is changed forever. Hundreds of miles away, at the Girdish Institute in Florida, a group of chimpanzees has been studied for decades. There is proof that chimps have memories and solve problems, that they can learn the language and need friends. They are political, altruistic; they get angry and forgive. Among them is Mr. Ghoul, who has grown up in a world of rivals, sex, and unpredictable loss. As Looee and Mr. Ghoul's distant but parallel paths through childhood, adolescence, and early middle age converge, a new experience of family is formed. Told simultaneously from the perspective of humans and chimpanzees, A Beautiful Truth is an inventive, thrillingly intelligent, and heartfelt novel about parenthood, friendship, loneliness, and strength, about the things we hold sacred as humans and the facts that link us inevitably to a nature we too often ignore." About the Author: "Colin McAdam has written for Harpers and The Walrus. His novel Some Great Thing won the Amazon/Books in Canada First Novel Award and was nominated for the Governor-General's Literary Award, the Rogers Writers Trust Award, the Commonwealth Writers Prize, and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in the U.K. His second novel, Fall, was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and awarded the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennon Prize. He lives in Toronto."