Thomas and I had spent several hours together the day before. If he wanted to pray, she told him, he should go to a church, not the library. She could hear him all the way up at the front desk.

She approached my brother and told him he’d have to keep his voice down or else leave the library. Theresa Fenneck, the children’s librarian, was officially in charge that day because the head librarian was at an all-day meeting in Hartford.

On the afternoon of October 12, 1990, my twin brother Thomas entered the Three Rivers, Connecticut Public Library, retreated to one of the rear study carrels, and prayed to God the sacrifice he was about to commit would be deemed acceptable. I Know This Much Is True is a masterfully told story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal-an unforgettable masterpiece. Coming to terms with his life and lineage, Dominick struggles to find forgiveness and finally rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his troubled twin. Dominick is forced to care for his brother as well as confront dark secrets and pain he has buried deep within himself-a journey of the soul that takes him beyond his blue-collar New England town to Sicily’s Mount Etna, the birthplace of his grandfather and namesake. It's hard to read and to stop reading, and impossible to forget.' - USA Todayĭominick Birdsey, a forty-year-old housepainter living in Three Rivers, Connecticut, finds his subdued life greatly disturbed when his identical twin brother Thomas, a paranoid schizophrenic, commits a shocking act of self-mutilation. An exercise in soul-baring storytelling-with the soul belonging to 20th-century America itself. #1 New York Times Bestseller and Oprah Book Club selection

I know this much is true lamb