It Rhymes With Truth

by Rich Miller

Overview

Sometimes the truth sets us free. But most of the time, it's the scariest thing in the world – so scary it keeps us on the run for our entire lives. Which is why, when an eight-and-a-half-year-old homeless boy and an eccentric elderly woman trapped in a retirement community forge a fragile bond and become each other's accidental family, they only have one rule: never speak about before. But the truth has a way of catching up to us, spoken or unspoken. And when the pair's bond is tested, they may finally have to face their pasts. Or they could just run like hell. Their fateful decisions lead to misadventures that include a 30 mile taxi ride, smuggled brownies, angry bees, a soundtrack by Cole Porter, and a rising body count that is (mostly) not their fault. It Rhymes With Truth is the story of two people wrestling with their pasts while they struggle with a vexing question: Is it possible to truly save someone else who may not want to be saved? This beguiling, haunting first novel by Rich Miller will stick with you long after the final page. This is the rare book makes you laugh out loud before breaking your heart, mending it, then putting it back in your chest with a different heartbeat.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798990770911
Publisher:	BookBaby
Publication date:	06/21/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	230
Sales rank:	945,288
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Rich Miller has been a professional writer for more than 25 years. His remarkable debut novel It Rhymes With Truth is a tragi-comic tale of an obstreperous elderly woman and even more obstreperous young boy trying to save themselves by attempting to save one another. His upcoming novel, Love Will Surely Save You, If It Doesn't Kill You First, will answer the burning question of who is to blame for this colossal mess we humans have gotten ourselves into. Miller wishes he had written Cat's Cradle, Beloved and Ubik, but nobody's perfect. He lives in the Pacific Northwest where the wild things are.

Editorial Reviews

10/28/2024

In Miller’s poignant debut, an elderly woman takes in a homeless boy and the pair get into mischief. Ruth spies the unnamed eight-year-old narrator outside her retirement home, eating sunflower seeds from her bird feeder because he’s starving. She invites him inside for cookies, and they bond while watching baseball on TV. She secretly allows him to stay, defying the building’s restrictions on overnight guests and insisting he hide whenever someone comes to the door. They also have a rule against talking about the past; it’s too painful, Ruth explains. In addition to watching baseball, they pull pranks on Ms. Millie, a neighbor Ruth dislikes, such as ordering pizza for her under the name Innedova Bath. When Ms. Millie catches the narrator living there and threatens to report Ruth, the pair takes drastic measures to silence her. More trouble follows, and when Ruth suffers a head injury, their roles reverse as the narrator attempts to care for her while holding onto his new home. Miller convincingly portrays the characters’ uncommon friendship as their initial caution fades and they go to great lengths to stay together. Miller’s curveball coming-of-age tale lands in the strike zone. (Self-published)

Publishers Weekly

2024-06-20
In Miller’s debut literary novel, a runaway unexpectedly comes to rely on an elderly woman.

The unnamed boy who narrates the novel first encounters Ruth while he’s smashing sunflower seeds with a rock outside her apartment. Ruth is a patient, joke-loving elderly woman who lives in a retirement community. The narrator is a grumpy, unhoused 8-year-old who hates approximately “573” things, including lollipops, home renovation shows, and anything that doesn’t make sense or wastes time. After Ruth slowly gains the boy’s trust by offering him cookies over a few days, the two build up a dialogue over games of hearts and televised baseball (the boy is a devoted collector of baseball cards). When it becomes clear that the boy has nowhere else to go, Ruth invites him to stay on her couch. She has a few ground rules related to the bathroom and the remote control, but Ruth seems especially set on one rule: “Under this roof,” she tells the boy, “there’s no talking about the past. No asking me how I got here. No asking what happened to me the day before we met, or the week before, or a year ago, or 10 years ago, or 70 years ago. That goes for both of us, including you.” The boy agrees, though his residence must remain a secret due to the rules of the retirement community. Life is good for a time; the boy hides under the sink whenever anyone comes over, and Ruth sneaks him food from the cafeteria. She encourages the boy to let his guard down and appreciate the good things in life, though he resists as much as he relents. But after an accident suffered during an impromptu vacation results in a dramatic shift in Ruth’s personality, the boy is forced to adapt—and learn about the interconnectedness of love and loss.

The boy narrates the story from the cusp of his adulthood, referring to Ruth as “you.” He channels his younger worldview as he does: “I tried not to think about cookies. I flipped through the puzzle book to distract myself. I told myself I would never go back to see you. Never ever. Not even for $1,000,000 worth of donuts. I started working on a medium-hard puzzle, messed up right away, and ripped the page out of the book.” The relationship between Ruth and the boy in the first half of the novel is a bit reminiscent of the filmHarold and Maude (minus the romantic element); Ruth is a bighearted, language-loving extrovert who delights in nearly everything. Miller’s innovation comes in the book’s second half, when Ruth’s kindness to another boy backfires horribly, forcing the narrator to become her caretaker. From then on, the novel becomes an increasingly heartbreaking story of the boy realizing who Ruth really is to him and what he needs to be to her. Miller’s deeply felt tale illustrates how life’s greatest challenges always arrive before we’re ready for them, and how they shape us into the people we become.

A masterfully controlled tear-jerker of a novel about found family.

Kirkus Reviews