A New York Times bestseller and Oprah Book Club 2.0 selection, the epic, unforgettable story of a man determined to protect the woman he loves from the town desperate to destroy her. This beautiful and devastating debut heralds the arrival of a major new voice in fiction. Ephram Jennings has never forgotten the beautiful girl with the long braids running through the piney woods of Liberty, … piney woods of Liberty, their small East Texas town. Young Ruby Bell, “the kind of pretty it hurt to look at,” has suffered beyond imagining, so as soon as she can, she flees suffocating Liberty for the bright pull of 1950s New York. Ruby quickly winds her way into the ripe center of the city—the darkened piano bars and hidden alleyways of the Village—all the while hoping for a glimpse of the red hair and green eyes of her mother.
When a telegram from her cousin forces her to return home, thirty-year-old Ruby finds herself reliving the devastating violence of her girlhood. With the terrifying realization that she might not be strong enough to fight her way back out again, Ruby struggles to survive her memories of the town’s dark past. Meanwhile, Ephram must choose between loyalty to the sister who raised him and the chance for a life with the woman he has loved since he was a boy.
Full of life, exquisitely written, and suffused with the pastoral beauty of the rural South, Ruby is a transcendent novel of passion and courage. This wondrous page-turner rushes through the red dust and gossip of Main Street, to the pit fire where men swill bootleg outside Bloom’s Juke, to Celia Jennings’s kitchen, where a cake is being made, yolk by yolk, that Ephram will use to try to begin again with Ruby.
Utterly transfixing, with unforgettable characters, riveting suspense, and breathtaking, luminous prose, Ruby offers an unflinching portrait of man’s dark acts and the promise of the redemptive power of love.
Ruby was a finalist for the PEN America Robert Bingham Debut Novel Award, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and an Indie Next Pick.
more
This is an amazing book, but it’s not going to be a book for everyone. Unless you like serious and depressing literary fiction, this is probably not going to be a good choice. If you do like that sort of thing, this book will tear your heart out, stomp on it, and put it back bruised. This book is beautifully written, but it takes on some heavy …
This recommendation comes with a warning. I absolutely adore this book. Beautifully written, haunting and it packs a real punch as it deals with the awful treatment of the central character.I’ve recommended this novel to friends – some are blown away, others turn away horrified. I love it and I think it’s an important read. Certainly you won’t be …
Outstanding book. Not what you might expect. Great characters, original plot. All around excellence.
Hard subject matter but very well written.
This book is not Easy-to-Read, nor Happily Ever After. but is an unforgettable story. As a first novel, this book deserves 5 stars plus. The story, the plot, the characters are brilliant. The setting, the town of Liberty in East Texas, is anything but free as its residents are held bound by the hypocrisy of religion, misogyny, racism and …
I liked the general story of the book.
The writer’s prose style was wonderful. The dialects were captured realisticly and the story itself was very haunting.
A good book to bring about depression
At times, this book (beautifully written) was very hard to read because of the violence men perpetrate on girl children and women. But it is well worth it. She created two indelible characters in Ruby and Ephram, who has loved Ruby since they were children and had to overcome many HUGE obstacles, including Ruby herself, to love her.
I didn’t enjoy
Very well written
One of the worst books I have read in a long time. Waste of time and money. Sexual situations that were contrived
Stark depiction of child and sexual abuse and racial discrimination in destroying a child’s self worth. Very sad.
After reading the reviews, I was apprehensive about starting this book. I don’t like stories that are heavily tragic because they leave my heart broken for the next few days to a week. I think the heaviness of this book was warranted. To really understand the depth of Ruby’s issues, her children and her inner demons, her past had to be written …
Too upsetting. Same story told again. I couldn’t make to the uplifting part
I loved it…it took me back to the beginning of the 20th century. Real characters,
real problems, a great feeling for the Western U.S.
It was so intense, it actually was exhausting. A good story nevertheless
This is a REAL book. The characters are believable. It is gritty and frightening in its focus on mans inhumanity to man. Sad to think this kind of hatred is still alive and well.
Horrible book. Recommend by Oprah and what a disappointment.
Often hard to read. It was compelling, but left me feeling very saddened.