About this ebook
From that moment on, everything Louise has believed in unravels. In their inner-city Southern neighborhood, situated between a cemetery and a madhouse, a place of leafy oak trees and ghosts, three other people become involved in Louises crisis: Rosa, the scandalous divorcee who entertains men for a living; Uta, the mysterious elderly lady who casts spells; and Max, the clairvoyant gravedigger.
In 2004, as Louise is dying, her daughter returns home, and she and her mother confront how the family was torn asunder in 1957. Louise finally reveals the long-held secret that haunted the family for the next fifty years.
This poignant novel is a gripping drama of madness and prejudice in which a mother leaves her daughter, ultimately, with hope.
Praise for Linda Lightsey Rice
Against the Ruins contains such gorgeous writing that it nearly takes your breath away, with a sense of humor and a fine appreciation of the ridiculous even amid great agony.
Natalie Goldberg
Rice has a fiery, incandescent talent.
Pat Conroy
About the author
Linda Lightsey Rice is the author of Southern Exposure, a Doubleday novel lauded as “Faulknerian” and nominated for the PEN Hemingway Award. She has taught creative writing in several colleges and universities, and has been awarded artistic fellowships from the McKnight Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Wurlitzer Foundation, and Hawthornden Castle Retreat for Writers in Scotland. A South Carolina native, she currently lives in Minneapolis.
