David Lewis had made it. He had built one of the country’s early fee-only financial planning firms, pioneering an approach that put clients first when the rest of the industry ran on commissions. He knew the story of how he got there: the Appalachian boy who overcame dyslexia, stepped out of a job at his grandfather’s bank, and rose through grit and integrity.

But then he started writing. And the stories fell apart.

What began as a simple memoir project became an excavation. Memories Lewis had repeated for decades collapsed under investigation. And the chapters he had buried for forty years demanded their place on the page: a brother’s betrayal that ended his banking career, a marriage that shattered, a period when no one would hire him. 

A New True to Me is both a memoir and a meditation on memoir itself. Lewis traces his Appalachian roots, his ancestors’ complicated legacy of ambition and slavery, and the collapse of a family bank that spanned three generations. But this is also a book about what happens when we turn to face the past and find it staring back, unrecognizable.