"Everything But the Truth" is a stunning debut of short fiction by Christopher McPherson, a carpenter by trade, who constructs, with disarming detail, stories of desire and loss, and the thin line between truth and fiction in people's lives. These are confessionals by characters whose emotional lives are laid bare, from a lovelorn hippo-keeper at the zoo, to an ill mother who has an affair with her vegetable garden. Versatile in style and theme, these narratives are driven by humour, grief, and the search for reason in a complicated world.