In the wilds of Topanga Canyon, Cassie Shaw is right at home - with the call of birds, the sound of wind in the trees, the harmony of a world without people. But everywhere else, life is a little harder for Cassie. Her mother believes in Big Foot. Her wisecracking pet parrot is a drama queen. And at the age of thirty, newly single and without a college degree, Cassie desperately needs a decent paycheck. Which is why, against all her principles, she lies on her résumé for an office job at an elite university - and then finds herself employed in academia by two professors who are as rare as the birds she covets.

One of her new bosses is Professor William Conner, a sexy, handsome, cheerfully aristocratic expert in animal behavior. Soon, under Conner's charismatic tutelage, Cassie carefully begins her personal transformation while meeting the kind of people who don't flock to wildlife preserves - from impossibly brilliant academics to adorably spoiled college boys. But her future - and unlikely new career - is teetering on one unbearable untruth. And Cassie's masquerade is about to come undone...in a chain of events that will transform her life - and the lives of those around her - forever.

A novel for late bloomers of every exotic shade and stripe, A Version of the Truth is pure entertainment - at once hilarious and wry, lyrical and uplifting.

Jennifer Kaufman was a staff writer at the Los Angeles Times and is a two-time winner of the national Penny-Missouri Journalism Award. She lives in Los Angeles.