a love story about pure-hearted patience conquering insurmountable odds. A total triumphĪva DuVernay, Golden Globe-nominated director of SELMA The characters Ruby and Ephraim shimmer with vibrancy - they show the complications of pain and joy, all messily and beautifully together. The writer has such a majestic command of language she catapults everyday words into rare air with lines that sear into your memory. Oprah recommended this book to me, and it is astounding. Uzo Aduba, star of ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK It went into the belly of the beast, and I don't know if I'm fully out of it yet. It was really incredible and very well written. The soaring, lyrical writing tells a story of cruelty and abuse and it's a heart-wrenching, difficult read at times but there is also magic and hope, and even some humourĪnna James, Elle (Bailey's Shortlist. A story of race and gender set against the backdrop of the spiritualism and small town politics of Liberty, Texas. 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. 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. Full of life, exquisitely written, and suffused with the pastoral beauty of the rural South, Ruby is a transcendent novel of passion and courage.

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. 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. When a telegram from her cousin forces her to return home, thirty-year-old Ruby finds herself reliving the devastating violence of her girlhood. Read more of the Village-all the while hoping for a glimpse of the red hair and green eyes of her mother. Ruby quickly winds her way into the ripe center of the city-the darkened piano bars and hidden alleyways. 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. ***SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS' WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2016*** 'LUMINOUS' Guardian 'STUNNING' New York Times 'EXCEPTIONAL' Uzo Aduba (Orange Is The New Black) Ephram Jennings has never forgotten the beautiful girl with the long braids running through the piney woods of Liberty, their small East Texas town.

Ruby and cynthia