By Ande Jacobson

Teri Kanefield has had multiple careers from teaching, to practicing law as an appellate attorney, to entertaining and informing through her writing. There is some overlap in all of it as she’s pursued her writing from many perspectives. She’s written numerous books across a wide spectrum from detailed biographies of various icons from American history, to entertaining and informative novels, to children’s books. And of course there were her appellate briefs that also told serious, factual stories and in doing so had to capture the attention of and persuade her intended audience – the judges and justices sitting in judgement. More recently, she’s also taken her writing to the internet through her blog and social media as she entertains and informs her audience.

When Kanefield releases a new work, it’s always worth reading, and she’s releasing a new novel entitled The Family Liar at the end of March 2026. The story is riveting and tough to put down. It’s a coming of age story that takes readers on quite a journey. Despite the challenges that Natalie faces at home and in life overall she perseveres and ultimately thrives. Her humble and tortured beginnings are more than a little disturbing. Her family is dysfunctional. It’s led by her mother, Lenora, who is clearly a disturbed individual. Lenora also has difficult beginnings which undoubtedly inform her later dysfunction. Kanefield begins with Lenora’s background in her Prelude chapter. She then picks up the main story which follows Natalie’s life from her troubled childhood through her eventual emergence as a well-rounded, highly educated force for good in the world.

Lenora torments Natalie from early on through heavy psychological assaults casting her as the title character in the story – the family’s liar – who should never be believed despite Natalie trying hard to bring the truth forward. Her mother is manipulative and impervious to facts. For her, things are as she defines them. For much of her life, Natalie thinks that there must be something wrong with her causing her to be an outcast, especially given her younger brother and sister are always in their mother’s good graces. She is too young when it starts to realize that the trauma inflicted upon her isn’t her fault but instead stems from her mother’s pathology. Her father doesn’t help matters by being disconnected and passive. He too has his own foibles that prevent him from taking even a modicum of interest in the situation. He just doesn’t care, but the reason why he reacts this way doesn’t come to light until much, much later. Although there are brief periods of respite where Natalie and her mother get along on the surface, it doesn’t take much to reignite the torment, and Natalie is bewildered as to why this keeps happening.

Once Natalie leaves home at eighteen, she starts to come into her own. She’s resourceful, brilliant, and curious. She wants to learn yet she’s easily bored by the mundane tasks she assumes to earn a living. It takes some time and encouragement from some dear friends she makes along the way, but she eventually pursues studies at an elite university, and her zeal for learning never really stops. She uses her intellect to unravel the mysteries that consumed her as a child, and through much time and effort she finally comes to realize that her tormented childhood wasn’t her fault after all.

Kanefield is a powerful storyteller, and she delves deeply into the effects of childhood trauma through Natalie’s experiences. The contrasts she draws between Natalie and her siblings are striking. The younger children in the household aren’t vilified the way Natalie is, but they also clearly don’t have her fortitude as is shown through their various interactions with Natalie over the years. Through this story, Kanefield also explores the nature / nurture balance. By all appearances, Natalie should become a dysfunctional adult, yet the story is one of perseverance and hope. Bad beginnings don’t necessarily condemn someone to lifelong torment just as good beginnings don’t necessarily guarantee success. Each situation is a different mix of inherent talents and outside influences. Children growing up in the same household can have very different experiences and reactions to common events, even traumatic ones, as this story shows. One person’s success can be another’s failure. The age at which a person experiences a trauma can also have a dramatic effect and can sometimes determine whether they will be able to fully recover or not irrespective of their inherent abilities.

The Postlude and Kanefield’s Author’s Note at the end will give readers a jolt. They pull the full story together in an unexpected and ultimately hopeful way. The novel was a longtime in coming. Kanefield started it back in the 1990s. Her Prelude chapter appeared as a short story in a literary publication in 1996. Other pieces of the story were first written as part of her master’s thesis. Her initial attempt to get it published didn’t go well. Undaunted she set it aside, and over the years she came back to it multiple times to try it again, each time adding more to the story as she continued to expand it through Natalie’s life. There was a version of the book released to a small market in 2023 that is no longer around, but this current version is more polished and more than worth the wait.

Kanefield ended up with a powerhouse novel filled with wit and an appropriate amount of snark, astute observations on the human condition, a bit of philosophy, more than a little psychology, and inspiration that it is possible to thrive even when the odds are stacked against you. This story is a relatable one, especially for anyone who has suffered familial trauma.

As Kanefield says at the end of her Author’s Note, this novel is her letter to the world. Everyone has a story to tell, sometimes many, and this one is a wonderful gift that will hopefully be widely read and appreciated.

Additional Reading:

terikanefield.com

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