Versions of the truth

Based loosely on a true story. John Milliken Thompson's 2011 novel The Reservoir tells of a young Virginia attorney, soon after the close of the Civil War, who stands trial for the murder of his pregnant cousin. Lillie's body is found in a Richmond reservoir. It may have been suicide, but it also may have been murder, and Tommie Cluverius admits to being in Richmond that night.

Lillie is actually supposed to marry Tommie's brother, Willie, while Tommie is engaged to another girl, considered a better match for Tommie's career. Yet he and Lillie can't stop seeing each other in secret. Then she discovers she is pregnant. Lillie is a storyteller, sometimes insisting Tommie is the only man she has been with, other times saying she did it with Willie. And then she claims she has been raped more than once by her own father.

Yet Tommie proves to be a storyteller, too. He tells one story to the police and to his attorneys: that he never saw Lillie while he was in Richmond. To his brother he tells two other stories. In one he was with Lillie at the reservoir that night but that she jumped into the water, hitting her head on the way down. His sin was failing to try to save her or to report the incident. In a third version, immediately withdrawn, he admits to killing her.

Like Lillie and Tommie, Thompson avoids a clear truth, and readers may be frustrated by not knowing precisely what happened that night at the reservoir. Yet there is much to admire here, especially the courtroom drama and the relationship of the two brothers. Tommie, who though he may be the main character, is simply too manipulative and two-faced to draw much admiration. Lillie senses Tommie's dark side, which in her heart she often finds more alluring than his more stable, upright brother, and that proves her undoing.