A Beautiful Truth
About this audiobook
Told simultaneously from the perspective of humans and chimpanzees, A Beautiful Truth—at times brutal, other times deeply moving—is about the simple truths that transcend species, the meaning of family, the lure of belonging, and the capacity for survival.
Looeeis forever set apart, a chimp raised by a well-meaning and compassionate human couple in Vermont who cannot conceive a baby of their own. He's not human, but with his peculiar upbringing he is no longer like other chimps. One tragic night Looee's two natures collide, and this unique family is forever changed.
At the Girdish Institute in Florida, a group of chimpanzees has been studied for decades. The work at Girdish has proved that chimps have memories and solve problems, that they can learn language and need friends, and that they build complex cultures. They are political, altruistic, and capable of anger and forgiveness. When Looee is moved to the institute, he is forced to try to find a place in this new world.
A Beautiful Truth is an epic and heartfelt story about parenthood, friendship, loneliness, fear, and conflict, about the things we hold sacred as humans and how much we have in common with our animal relatives. A novel of great heart and wisdom from a literary master, it exposes the yearnings, cruelty, and resilience of all great apes.
About the author
Colin McAdam ’s debut novel, Some Great Thing, won the Amazon First Novel Award in Canada and was nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Prize, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book, and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. His second novel, Fall, was short-listed for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and was awarded the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize. He has written for Harper’s and lives in Toronto.
Joe Barrett began his acting career at the age of five in the basement of his family's home in upstate New York. He has gone on to play many stage roles, both on and off-Broadway, and in regional theaters from Los Angeles, Houston, and St. Louis to Washington DC, San Francisco, and Portland, Maine. He has appeared in films and television, both prime time and late night, and in hundreds of television and radio commercials. Joe has narrated over two hundred audiobooks. He has been an Audie Award finalist eight times, and his narration of Gun Church by Reed Farrel Coleman won the 2013 Audie Award for Original Work. AudioFile magazine has granted Joe fourteen Earphones Awards, including for James Salter's All That Is and Donald Katz's Home Fires. Regarding Joe's narration of John Irving's A Prayer For Owen Meany, AudioFile said, "This moving book comes across like a concerto... with a soloist-Owen's voice-rising from the background of an orchestral narration." Joe is married to actor Andrea Wright, and together they have four very grown children.
