Connie Biewald

Polyphonic and vibrant, Truth Like Oil is a brilliant tale of racial bias and the foundations of community; a novel of our times and totally irresistible.

Germany, 1914. Three young sisters are torn from their mother and each other, sent to the country to do the work of farmers off fighting in the Great War. They struggle to endure the painful separation. Sofie, Amalia, and Dora Bauer reunite with their mother at the war's end and come of age during the Weimar years, a time of resistance, retaliation, food shortages, and wild inflation, when a cabbage costs a billion marks and a wheelbarrow of money can't buy a loaf of bread. Their passions and search for safety and meaning in a violent and chaotic world lead them to make religious, political, and romantic choices that test the limits of their powerful bond. As circumstances wrench them apart once again, Sofie, Amalia, and Dora fight to stay connected, sustained by memory, story and fierce love.

"At the very beginning of the First World War, when many folk in Germany still had enough to eat, there lived three hungry sisters. Sofie, the oldest, had restless gray eyes, the color of the ocean on a stormy day. Amalia's eyes were the steady brown of newly plowed potato fields. Dora's shone blue as the Virgin Mary's robes." "At ages nine, eight, and seven these girls didn't have to be told the world was dangerous. They knew from their mother's worried face and how she said it would be only for a short while but they had to be good, no trouble to anyone, and spend their days locked safely in the room rented from Frau Becker-a tight white room with a bed, a chamber pot, some crates that served as table and chairs, one high shelf, a plain wooden crucifix, and the necessary nearness of sisters."