After the first black supervisor in a Texas oil refinery is murdered, there’s a damning confession—but the witness will never testify. A tale of murder, sex, racial conflict, and labor strife on the Texas Gulf Coast in 1980.
What Seems True was inspired by a true crime that took place in Port Arthur, Texas, in 1979, a crime for which the shooter has never been convicted or even tried. I was there when a real-life Texas Ranger came to a Texaco oil refinery’s asphalt plant to investigate the murder of the plant’s first African-American supervisor. While this outcome seems an injustice that cannot be corrected, what continues to intrigue the author is the psychological aspects of the case: the motives of the people involved and the nature of their relationships. What Seems True uses a similar fictional murder and situation to examine those relationships and motives—which may not be as clear cut as they seem at first blush. The novel is also a story about the fraught relationships of workers—white and black, male and female—in a gritty industrial setting on the Texas Gulf Coast in 1980, a time and place where the 1964 Civil Rights Act still provided minorities and women only a glimmer of hope for workplace equality. "Award-winning author, J. D. Garrison returns with East Texas mayhem in the crime fiction novel, WHAT SEEMS TRUE. These larger-than-life characters deliver an entertaining read of lust, oil, good old boys, and one femme fatale."—Johnnie Bernhard, author of SISTERS OF THE UNDERTOW "Smart and sensual, atmospheric, you can feel the humidity of the Texas Gulf Coast, smell the smoke-filled boardrooms and musty motels, the exhaust belching forth from the refinery that lights up the night sky like a fairyland in James Garrison's latest novel, What Seems True ... A savvy tale full of grit and grime and passion, vivid characters, and a male narrator who will appeal to
