Ephram and Ruby meet as children in 1940, when Ruby comes to Liberty to visit family, and though decades pass before they see each other again, Ephram cannot and does not forget Ruby. Set in the small East Texas town of Liberty, Ruby is the tale of the titular Ruby Bell and the man who loves her, Ephram Jennings. 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.Cynthia Bond will talk about and sign copies of her debut novel, Ruby, at Blue Willow Books in Houston on Wednesday, May 7, at 7 p.m.Ĭynthia Bond’s debut novel leaves the reader dirty, her words clinging to your eyes, your hands and your heart as if you have just stood naked, battered and raw in a dust storm of them. 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. 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.įull of life, exquisitely written, and suffused with the pastoral beauty of the rural South, Ruby is a transcendent novel of passion and courage. 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 Bell finds herself reliving the devastating violence of her girlhood. 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. 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. 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 by Cynthia Bond