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Reviewed by Inga Buccella for Readers' Favorite
Lucy Mercer, a farm girl from Sweetwater, Tennessee, is the protagonist in The Lie Collector by Ann Howard Creel. After her fiancé is hired to work at Oak Ridge, he goes missing after a short time. Lucy becomes a sleuth searching for answers to the mystery but initially has only a brief note from Greg that reads, “I’m sorry.” Also hired to live and work in the “secret city,” Lucy looks for any evidence that can explain Greg’s disappearance. But the walls have ears, and she needs to be very careful about who she can confide in. It’s a game of cat and mouse, because she needs to uncover information without raising suspicion. Trust is hard to find on the road to the truth. But, in the end, it may be Lucy who has the most secrets to keep.
Unless you lived during the creation of the Manhattan Project or the bombing of Hiroshima, I don’t think you can imagine the huge secret city located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. I can hardly fathom that it housed over 75,000 employees who lived there, working toward a goal that most knew nothing about. But thanks to Ann Howard Creel, I could not only peek inside the facilities and dorms, but I could actually live alongside some of the dedicated men and women. The author’s descriptions are so realistic that I could smell the fresh mud coating almost everything after rain, making the compound seem even more desolate. The character development and the author’s talent for writing are absorbing. The plot, characters, writing style, and subject matter are equally impressive. My favorite characters were the indomitable Lucy and the photographer, Finch, because each has a unique and complex personality. Ultimately, The Lie Collector is not only a historical novel but also a heartwarming human story.
