Book Review: No Lies Live Forever

Compher, Catherine Fatica. No Lies Live Forever. Austin Macauley Publishers LLC, November 30 2020, Print and E-Book, 279 pages.

Reviewed by Paige Doepke.

No Lies Live Forever is first and foremost a love story, but perhaps not in the way many of us think of “love stories.” In some ways, sure, it is the typical love story of a man and a woman. But more than that, it’s a story about the love of a father toward his children. I very much enjoyed this unique angle and the format in which the story was told, over several decades, with each chapter dedicated to a different character’s perspective.

The main character and father, Sal Casalino, has spent his life trying to be the “good guy” in situations that keep trying to force him to be bad. When decisions he made to keep his family afloat as a young man in Italy come back to haunt him as an older man with a wife and children in America, he chooses to put his family first, as he has done each time before.

To protect his family from harm, Sal fakes his death to all except his friend, George. For a decade, he goes on living in a self-made “prison,” never able to see or talk to his wife and children as they grow older. George keeps him up to date on big occurrences, ultimately breaking the news to Sal that his wife and longtime love, Elizabeth, has passed away.

The news of his wife’s death catapults Sal’s story, which until this point has buoyed among four decades, into the present. Sal finds himself inching closer and closer to his children, observing them without their knowledge, until finally, the troublesome family who led Sal into confinement in the first place threatens his adult children’s safety.

After years apart, Sal returns to his family to finally put an end to the threats that have haunted him, and now them, for years. While he never imagined that his wife, Elizabeth, would be gone by the time he could reunite with his family, Sal watches his children and thinks that life alongside them must be a dream come true.

There is a beautiful quality of self-sacrifice that immigrant parents make time and time again for their families. Sal embodies this quality, which is so very un-American in so many ways, to his core. He gives and gives throughout his whole life just to keep the people around him safe and cared for. I found his love for his children, particularly, and the pain of being separated from them, to feel so real and raw.

I highly recommend No Lies Live Forever to any reader who appreciates real-life stories of trial, tribulation and love. Compher’s ability to create such robust characters through their development over several decades is what kept me particularly engaged in this story. I wanted to know who Sal would be as the years went on and how he would rise to the changing occasions in his life. This book is a beautiful tale of coming home!