The Secret-Keepers’ Stories by Joyce Lewis-Andrews

The Deep, Dark Secret About Nothing Good transforms Ethel’s maternal family from accomplished storytellers into secret keepers, especially when her daughter starts snooping. In the end, it was the power of the anthology of stories they spun, not the secrets they kept, that guided the girl to discover, understand, and appreciate her truest self.

In her 71,679 word, 246-page debut work of creative nonfiction, The Secret-Keepers’ Stories, Joyce Lewis-Andrews, author and the last of their listeners, chronicles her Pittsburgh family’s three-generational journey — from industrial migration to the middle class— through the lens of twentieth-century stories and events that shaped their lives

Set at the confluence of Northern Appalachia and the American Rust Belt, The Secret-Keepers’ Stories creates a portrait of ten working-class Pittsburghers and the immigrant matriarch who raised them. Part memoir and part biography, this work explores the strength and fallibility of the storylines, storytellers, and sibling rivalries that define who we are, who we’re not, who we were, and who we still might be.

Click here for a sneak preview of their stories.

This work of creative nonfiction is the debut novel of Joyce Lewis-Andrews, the last of their listeners.