Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth is the emotional story of a woman's struggle to acknowledge her birth family. Grace, a Native girl adopted by a White family, is asked by her birth sister to return to the Reserve for their mother's funeral. Afraid of opening old wounds, Grace must find a place where the culture of her past can feed the truth of her present.

"Bobbi Lee confronts white Canadian society on the ground that it stole from the First Nations of this country. A tough autobiography of an Indian woman's life from the mud flats of Second Narrows Bridge, Vancouver, to the Toronto of the sixties and seventies, Lee Maracle gives us an important sense of the tough terrain of struggle toward political consciousness which all oppressed peoples undertake. Bobbi Lee is a hopeful work for recovering the possibilities of envisioning a world where we are not beaten down every day."- Dionne Brand