Ruby: Oprah's Book Club 2.0

Cynthia Bond

Jan 2015 · Hogarth

About this ebook

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 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 boyFrom Booklist *Starred Review* Ephram Jennings, the son of a backwoods preacher, has been in love with the beautiful Ruby Bell ever since childhood. But Ruby has been so badly used by the men in her small African American town of Liberty, Texas, that she flees for New York City as soon as she is able, in search of the mother who abandoned her. When Ruby’s best friend dies, Ruby returns home, only to succumb to the bad memories that haunt her still. Once sharply dressed and coiffed, she now wanders the streets with ripped clothing and vacant eyes. But Ephram still sees her as the lighthearted girl with pigtails, running free in the woods. And so he begins his long, sweet courtship, bringing her a homemade cake, cleaning her filthy house, and always treating her with kindness. At long last, out from under his overbearing sister’s dominion, he feels himself come alive. But the church folks in town view their relationship as the work of the devil and seek to bring Ephram back to God and to cast out Ruby. In her first novel, Bond immerses readers in a fully realized world, one scarred by virulent racism and perverted rituals but also redeemed by love. Graphic in its descriptions of sexual violence and suffering, this powerful, explosive novel is, at times, difficult to read, presenting a stark, unflinching portrait of dark deeds and dark psyches. --Joanne Wilkinson --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. Review

“Channeling the lyrical phantasmagoria of early Toni Morrison and the sexual and racial brutality of the 20th century east Texas, Cynthia Bond has created a moving and indelible portrait of a fallen woman... Bond traffics in extremely difficult subjects with a grace and bigheartedness that makes for an accomplished, enthralling read.” —Thomas Chatterton Williams, San Francisco Chronicle

“A beautifully wrought ghost story, a love story, a survival story...[A] wonderful debut.” —Angela Flournoy, Los Angeles Review of Books

“Hauntingly beautiful… Bond wrote Ruby to bear witness for the girls who can't escape the torture. And to encourage the girls who do to believe that even after such dark experiences, there can be light”—NPR

“Compelling and vital.” —People

“Reading Cynthia Bond’s Ruby, you can’t help but feel that one day this book will be considered a staple of our literature, a classic. Lush, deep, momentous, much like the people and landscape it describes, Ruby enchants not just with its powerful tale of lifelong quests and unrelenting love, but also with its exquisite language. It is a treasure of a book, one you won’t soon forget.”—Edwidge Danticat, author of Claire of the Sea Light

“Pure magic. Every line gleams with vigor and sound and beauty. Ruby somehow manages to contain the darkness of racial conflict and cruelty, the persistence of memory, the physical darkness of the piney woods and strange elemental forces, and weld it together with bright seams of love, loyalty, friendship, laced with the petty comedies of small-town lives. Slow tragedies, sudden light. This stunning debut delivers and delivers and delivers.”—Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander
 
“Ruby is a harrowing, hallucinatory novel, a love story and a ghost story about one woman’s attempt to escape the legacy of violence in a small southern town. Cynthia Bond writes with a dazzling poetry that’s part William Faulkner, part Toni Morrison, yet entirely her own. Ruby is encircled by shadows, but incandescent with light.”—Anthony Marra, author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

“From the first sentence, Cynthia Bond’s unforgettable debut novel, Ruby, took hold of me and it hasn’t let go. Cynthia Bond has written a book everyone should read, about the power of love to overcome even the darkest of histories.”—Amy Greene, author of Bloodroot

“Bond proves to be a powerful literary force, a writer whose unflinching yet lyrical prose is reminiscent of Toni Morrison’s.” —O, The Oprah Magazine

“In Ruby, Bond has created a heroine worthy of the great female protagonists of Toni Morrison…and Zora Neale Hurston… Bond’s style of writing is as magical as an East Texas sunrise.” —Dallas Morning News

“Evocative, affective and accomplished… Bond tells the story of Ruby and Ephram’s lives and their relationship with unflinching honesty and a surreal, haunting quality.” —Texas Observer 

“Gorgeous… Bond is a gifted writer, powerful and nimble… [I]t’s tempting to call up Toni Morrison or Alice Walker or Ntozake Shange. It should be done more as compliment than comparison, though…Bond’s is a robustly original voice.” 
—Barnes and Noble Review

“If you love well-written historical fiction and multifaceted grown-up characters, put Ruby at the top of your beach bag... Bond delivers multiple goods with this one.” —Essence

“Cynthia Bond creates a vibrant chorus of voices united by a common struggle… [T]he prose’s lyricism and Ruby’s interaction with the dead call to mind Beloved… While Bond’s characters may sense the inevitability of loss and loneliness, they are also driven by something else, a timid hopefulness that they may find serenity and compassion amid the ghosts who haunt them.” —The Rumpus

“A testament to the power of the human spirit.” —Bustle

“Exquisite, juxtaposing horrific imagery with dreamy evocative lyricism.”
—Lambda Literary

“Literary magic.” —St. Louis American

“Ruby explores the redeeming power of love in the face of horrific trauma… If the truth shall set us free, Ms. Bond shows us, in her story of grace, that love is truth.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“[A] dark and redemptive beauty... Bond’s prose is evocative of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, paying homage to the greats of Southern gothic literature.”
—Library Journal (starred)

“[A] powerful, explosive novel. Bond immerses readers in a fully realized world, one scarred by virulent racism and perverted rituals but also redeemed by love.”
—Booklist (starred)

“An unusual, rare and beautiful novel that is meant to be experienced as much as read.” —Shelf Awareness (starred)

“A stunning debut. Ruby is unforgettable.” —John Rechy, author of City of Night

“Cloaked in authenticity, Ruby is unlike anything else out there right now.”
—Windy City Times

“A fierce and poetic tale.”—The Chronicle Herald (CA)

“Many will compare Ruby to the work of Toni Morrison or Zora Neale Hurston…It may be most apt to compare Bond to Gabriel García Márquez. Ruby is woven with magical realism…Luminous.”—The Guardian (UK)

“Impeccably crafted… Ruby is undoubtedly the early work of a master storyteller whose literary lyricism is nothing short of pitch perfect.” —BookPage

“[A] daring, lushly written debut…Bond rightly insists that these stories must be heard. .. Readers can take heart as they see Ruby and Ephram stand up to brutality and small-mindedness, finding courage and thus a freedom that can never be taken from them. In their actions, they capture Bond’s own heartfelt hope: ‘If there is a message in my book, it’s that we will always rise.’”—Library Journal

“Bracing....Undeniable....The echoes of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison are clear....A very strong first novel that blends tough realism with the appealing strangeness of a fever dream.” —Kirkus

From the Author Essay by Cynthia Bond

There are elements of Ruby—locations, characters, stories—that have come from real life. It’s a bit like a pot of gumbo. There are moments, spices, that have been stirred in slowly—from my life and from the stories of others.

Some of my first memories are listening to my mother tell stories about her childhood home, a small, all-black East Texas town. A stunningly beautiful and nationally recognized academician today, my mother grew up on a little farm in the piney woods. She has a collection of tiny scars on her body that illustrate her journey…stepping on a rusty nail and having to wear a slab of salt pork wrapped around her foot for an entire summer. The elbow where a teacup was hurled at her as she bolted out of a door. As children, my sister and I would point to each of these scars, these “chapters” in her young life. In many ways, this is how Ruby began.

As my sister and I grew older, my mother shared more of her story. Of her beloved sister being murdered by the Sheriff and his deputies, of so many other siblings who, because of their skin color and the dehumanization of racism, made the decision to flee up North and pass for white. My mother told us tales of being picked on for being “yellow,” having light skin and straight hair. She told us how, for survival, she learned to fight to protect herself. How she became legendary, beating boys and girls three times her size. Maggie, in my novel, is this part of my mother’s life.

More than anything, my sister and I grew to love our grandfather, Mr. James Marshall, the son of a slave master and a slave, who has become Mr. Bell in the novel. Mr. Marshall who was so light in complexion, whose eyes were so blue and hair so blond, that he was mistaken for white. However, he always corrected the misconception. When stepping onto a bus, and being told by the driver that he did not have to go to the back of the bus my grandfather would turn around and say, “No sir, I’m colored.”

My own history of abuse informed this novel, as well. I joined a support group very early on in my recovery and met an amazing woman who had survived the unthinkable. She had lived through some of the things that I write about in Ruby. Then, in completely disconnected instances, I heard similar stories from women who had never met my friend, sharing the same details, the exact same experiences. Somewhere along the way, working with at risk and homeless youth in Los Angeles for 15 years, living with my own abuse, and hearing stories of such pain and torment, I thought—If you can bear to have lived it, I can at least bear to listen. Ephram Jennings says that in some form to Ruby later in the novel. I asked that of myself while working on this book.

I read books about conjure and ancient spiritual beliefs, about both healing and destructive magic in the Deep South and throughout America in both white and black communities. I have, as a writer, taken the facts I have gathered and woven them together—images, and voices, with the ephemeral thread of fiction. I had already written scenes, snippets of a short story entitled Ruby, and these images were already sifting through my mind, my heart and my fingers. They had taken hold.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

About the author

CYNTHIA BOND, a PEN Rosenthal Fellow, has taught writing to homeless and at-risk youth throughout Los Angeles for more than fifteen years. Her novel, RUBY, was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and was chosen as an Indie Next Pick by independent booksellers throughout the U.S. Ruby was also nominated for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. O, The Oprah Magazine says, “Cynthia Bond proves to be a powerful literary force, a writer whose unflinching yet lyrical prose is reminiscent of Toni Morrison’s.” Bond attended Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, then moved to New York and attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She founded the Blackbird Writing Collective in 2011. At present, Bond teaches therapeutic writing at Paradigm Malibu Adolescent Treatment Center. A native of East Texas, she lives in Los Angeles with her daughter.