Ruth
A Novel
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Named a Wall Street Journal Top 10 Book of 2025
Named a Washington Post Top 10 Fiction Book of 2025
Named a Best Book of the Year by Vulture, Marie Claire and Vanity Fair
"I loved RUTH."—Lorde
“It would never work out, but I’m in love with Ruth.”—Ron Charles, The Washington Post
“A wonderful, loving, tenderly teasing and often moving portrait … [a] standout.”—Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal
“There are inklings of greatness in Kate Riley’s first novel… I suspect it will become an underground classic.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times
In this mesmerizing and profound novel, the arc of a woman's life in a devout, insular community challenges our deepest assumptions about what infuses life with meaning.
Ruth is raised in a snow globe of Christian communism, a world without private property, television, or tolerance for idle questions. Every morning she braids her hair and wears the same costume, sings the same breakfast song in a family room identical to every other family room in the community; every one of these moments is meant to be a prayer, but to Ruth they remain puzzles. Her life is seen in glimpses through childhood, marriage, and motherhood, as she tries to manage her own perilous curiosity in a community built on holy mystery. Is she happy? Might this in fact be happiness? Ruth immerses us in an experience that challenges our most fervent beliefs.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Riley's wonderful debut follows a woman at odds with the Christian commune she was born into. Inquisitive and eccentric Ruth Della Schol grows up in 1960s Gracefield, Mich., one of the Brotherhood's so-called Dorfs, where members lead humble lives devoted to Christ. Their provisions are rationed and their children are raised under strictly defined gender roles. From a young age, Ruth is drawn to the world beyond the Brotherhood and becomes riveted by news of the civil rights movement—sparking an interest in social activism that prompts her to question the Brotherhood's insularity, even as she wrestles with whether her impulse to do good is genuine or mere attention-seeking. Her curiosity grows as she matures and transfers to the nearby Dorf of Edendale, where she eventually meets and marries Alan Feder. The roles of wife and mother begin to feel increasingly ill-fitting, however, and Ruth's restless anger compels her to ask what a full life truly looks like. Riley keeps the narrative grounded with her wry depictions of everyday life in the Dorfs, where married couples "earned privacy from others in exchange for nudity before each other." Even as she renders the stifling conditions, she never loses sight of the characters' humanity and spiritual searching, and she adeptly explores how faith and love can be sustained. It's a remarkable achievement.
