Big Lies in a Small Town: A Novel

Apart from the wear and tear of time, the mural includes a bizarrely out-of-place element: the front end of a motorcycle protruding from the skirts of the Tea Party women. In addition, the mural is in such bad condition that Morgan fears it is beyond repair, but she assures Lisa that she can complete the project by the assigned deadline.

Unable to afford a hotel for the duration of her stay, Anna moves in with Myrtle Simms, a local woman with room to spare. Myrtle suggests that Anna’s mural “must” include the Tea Party (despite the men’s objections), saying, “[I]t was important. It started a whole movement throughout the colonies” (59). The men in the town, Myrtle argues, may seem uneducated but are “sharp as a tack” (60). This comment is a lesson for Anna in Southern culture: the fact that surface appearances may mask hidden agendas.

After a sleepless night, Morgan walks into town and purchases a few necessities: a phone, a laptop, and some new clothes. Next, she meets with her parole officer, Rebecca. She explains that Trey, her boyfriend at the time, had been driving when the accident happened, but she covered for him. Later, with a prison sentence looming, she tried to tell the truth, but no one believed her. Rebecca explains the details of her parole—she must work a minimum of 20 hours a week, attend AA meetings, wear an alcohol-detection anklet, and remain in the county for the full year of her probation. After the meeting, she walks to the gallery and examines the mural once more, feeling the deadline creeping ever closer with no idea of how to even begin the project.

The mayor, Sterling Sykes, drives Anna to an abandoned warehouse outside of town: a potential workspace. Despite her initial reservations—the lack of light, its remote location, the high beams she finds unsettling—she agrees.

Morgan’s laptop arrives, and she sets up her email account, careful to erase all emails from her past. A cursory search for “art restoration” further convinces her that this is not a one-person job, certainly not for someone inexperienced in art restoration. Looking at old Instagram photos of her and her parents reminds her of their addiction to alcohol and the emotional abuse she suffered as a child. With no friends or support network, she feels alone. Afraid to go too deeply down the social media rabbit hole, she returns to her research but finds so much contradictory information that she soon becomes overwhelmed.

Looking for food, she finds an old “height chart” marking Lisa’s stages of development as a child. Suddenly, this house, with its plentiful artwork, feels less like a museum and more like a home. Lisa returns and badgers her about the deadline. Morgan, stressed and confused, tries to lower Lisa’s expectations. Lisa, clearly stressed herself, tells Morgan to “’[j]ust make it good enough to hang in the foyer […] It’s not the Mona Lisa’” (81).

Anna tours Edenton’s cotton mill and is awed by its size and complex machinery, but the small details—wisps of cotton caught in the surrounding trees, the surrounding tiny homes of “Mill Village”—truly catch her eye. At the peanut factory, she notices that nearly all of the workers are Black, and she decides to include Edenton’s Black population in her mural. As she tries to sleep that night, a rough draft of the mural begins to form in her mind, and she resolves that the Tea Party will be “front and center whether the gentlemen [like] it or not” (84).