Living, Breathing Lies-Gloria Mallette

Living, Breathing Lies
Gloria Mallette
Gemini, Jun 2007
ISBN: 9780967878928

When her parents died eleven-year-old heiress Nadirah Lewis moved into the home of her paternal Aunt Stephanie Richards. Whereas Aunt Stephanie is cruel and abusive to everyone, her spouse firefighter Lester was very kind and loving to his niece as was her twin sibling older cousins Les and Lynn. A few years later, an accident leaves Stephanie physically crippled and Nadirah emotionally crippled as her guardian blames her ward for causing the trauma. Just under a decade after Nadirah joins the Richards family and long after the cousins moved out, Lester dies.

Stephanie uses guilt as a weapon to keep Nadirah home with her. However, the elementary schoolteacher is turning thirty in ten months and besides inheriting a four million dollar plus trust fund from her late parents, she begins to want out of jail, but is afraid to go it alone. Lynn, who left her acrimonious mother almost seventeen years ago, encourages Nadirah to make the break. However, it is her at risk eight years old student Bree, who desperately needs help and that leads Nadirah to believe she can do it especially if she wants to become the child’s guardian. A desperate Stephanie fearing being left to die alone, does what she does best; spreading lies of a teacher-student affair that harms her niece especially when Bree’s unstable family surface with demands of the teacher.

LIVING, BREATHING LIES is a powerful character study that focuses in on dysfunctional interrelationships built on fabrications. Each of the Richards are unique, but the most profound protagonist is Aunt Stephanie who is a household Machiavelli as she manipulated her husband to do what she wanted and likewise her niece; in the latter guilt is tight handcuffs. Nadirah is also fascinating as a willing victim filled with guilt that her aunt insures overflows. As the web of lies that go much wider than Nadirah knows begins to unravel one thread at a time, readers will demand more angst family dramas like this tense tale.

Harriet Klausner