It Rhymes with Truth — Miller '96

By Rich Miller, Class of 1996

Sometimes the truth sets us free. Other times it’s a life sentence for a crime we never committed.

Which is why, when an eight-year-old homeless boy and an eccentric elderly woman trapped in a retirement community forge a fragile bond and become each other’s unwitting family, they only have one rule: never speak about Before.

But the truth has a way of catching up to us, spoken or unspoken. And when the pair’s bond is tested, the only way to rise above the forces that threaten to destroy the good thing between them is to confront each other’s pasts head on. Whether they want to or not.

Rhymes with Truth is a mostly true account of an epic battle of wills between people on opposite ends of life that includes escape plans, conflicting appraisals of the facial hair of 1980s baseball players, birds that
weren’t there, birds that were there, strategies for children to buy expensive scotch, and a rising body count that is (mostly) not their fault.

It is an examination of the colossal challenges of being a parent, the even more colossal challenges of trying to grow up to be a good person, and the even colossal-er lengths that people will go to for the people they love in a world that just might be crazy.