Sacrament of Lies Hardcover - 2002

by Elizabeth Dewberry

An allusive psychological mystery filled with murders, corruption, politics Southern-style, and shadowy conspiracies.

"In Sacrament of Lies, the line between certainty and madness is as thin as a razor and equally as dangerous. Elizabeth Dewberry has given us a rare gift, a literary thriller that will keep us up all night. This book is riveting. " (Ann Patchett)

When Grayson Guillory begins to suspect her power-hungry father, the governor of Louisiana, and her new husband of murdering her mother, she finds herself questioning her own sanity. She knows her mother suffered from manic depression and believes she committed suicide. But then Grayson discovers a video in which her mother accuses the governor of plotting her murder, and those bitter accusations strike a chord.

Is it murder or suicide? As she searches for clues to help divine the truth, Grayson both fears that she has inherited her mother's delusional illness, and fears that she hasn't. In this world of ghosts and ambiguous facts, no evidence seems final. Grayson is torn between loyalty to the memory of the mother she loved and loyalty to her father, whose charismatic ambition at once attracts and repels her. To make matters worse, her father has hastily married her mother's younger sister, Audrey. And while her father's marriage seems happy, Grayson's own new marriage is faltering under the weight of her suspicions.

Written in a fluid and captivating dramatic monologue that leads to a stunning showdown, Elizabeth Dewberry's atmospheric story explores how some families nurture cruel secrets at the expense of truth and redefine love in attempts to accommodate evil. Sacrament of Lies raises questions about family, love, loyalty, ambition, and morality in a kind of modern-day Hamlet set in New Orleans with the genders reversed.