I received an advance copy of Ruby from the First Reads group on Good Reads.
This is absolutely the opposite of some of the books I enjooy. It's aobut a man
and a women in 1930's Liberty Texas. They are black during a time when being so
can cause big problems for a young girl. This book is heavy, disturbing, and gut
wrenching. What happened to Ruby during her young life while she was in Liberty
and while she was away is really really sad. I had to work to get through this
book it wasn't a happy book. I think someone may make a movie of this book, it
is a book aobut two people Ruby and Ephraim who has been in love with Ruby since
she was a very young girl. She disappeard and was back to her grandfathers home
when she was in her 30's. Ephraim had to choose between Ruby and his sister that
raised him who is very entrenched int he local church. Ruby is everything they
see wrong in a person even though the men of the town made Ruby who she was.
This is not a fast or happy read. It deals with a lot of unpleasant subjects and
some of them they tell about the girl torn apart by what happens to her but they
don't do anaything about it. This just wasn't my favorite type of book. I'm
sorry because I always love recieveing new books in the mail. I did donate this
book to a small library that my Mom donates time to in Linden Iowa. I'm sure
they will welcome the book as they have a very small budget.
Here is hte
description as found here on Amazon.:
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, their small
East Texas town. Young Ruby, “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 Bell 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
