When a telegram from her cousin forces her to return home, thirty-year-old Ruby 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 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. Will be noticeably worn.Įphram Jennings has never forgotten the beautiful girl with the long braids running through the piney woods of Liberty, their small East Texas town. Used - Fair: Worn book that has complete text pages but may have some small defect like slight tears. Used - Good: Average used worn book that has all pages or leaves present. Used - Very Good: Shows some small signs of wear - but no tears - on either binding or paper.

Please check “condition” in product details before ordering. It’s stayed with me ever since.This is a second-hand, used copy of this book. Not an easy one by any stretch of the imagination but boy, am I glad I read it. There were times when I genuinely couldn’t put this one down and others were I had to because it was so tough and overwhelming.

But that’s also because Bond is a gifted writer - her prose as so beautiful you’ll want to spoon it up - and it is hard to believe that this book is a debut. Indeed, this is a novel that is laced with magical realism, which have resulted in comparisons to Toni Morrison and also Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Only one person - Ephraim Jennings - truly sees Ruby, for who she was and now is, upon her return to her home town and what develops between them in magical. We learn how Ruby got here, how she was formed and made, a once beautiful girl who managed to get to New York after a string of horrifying events. She lives at the edge of the town she hardly exists in a ramshackle hut that her dead father once owned. The story of Ruby Bell from east Texas, to say she’s been through hell is quite the understatement. Ruby was one of those books and I must give you the heads up it is, in parts, utterly harrowing. And in the days before bookstagram, I used to trawl through the to try and find those sorts of novels, usually books that had done really well across the pond but hadn’t yet become widely known in good ol’ Blighty. I’ve always liked to discover books things I haven’t come across, heard of or even been recommended to me by a friend.

Cynthia bond books