I’m Just Being Honest

Dana Kessler is 38. She has been the school secretary at Harold Pruitt K-8 in Dayton, Ohio, for eleven years, and everyone recognizes her for one thing: she tells the truth. She catches the typo in the principal’s notice, the sum that doesn’t add up, the way a colleague talks to a student. And she says so. Always, for free, without anyone asking.

At home, at Sunday dinner, the same rule holds. If you don’t correct people, you lose. Dana grew up hearing it, believes it, and has never had a reason to doubt it until a correction she makes in front of everyone costs more than she expected.

I’m Just Being Honest is a novel about what happens when an honest, hardworking, well-meaning person begins to suspect that being right can be expensive. The childhood friend who stopped calling. The fifteen-year-old daughter who watches everything and answers with irony. The husband who avoids a fight and hands her a psychologist’s business card. The neighbor over the fence who has sewn all her life and can tell a story without handing you the moral.

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