Ruth by Marlene S. Lewis
Indie Books Monday, January 9th, 2012
Ruth by Marlene S. Lewis
Troubador Publishing Ltd ( 2011 ), 336 page
ISBN-10: 1848766238
ISBN-13: 978-1848766235
Description
It is the late 1950s — the dawn of the civil rights and women’s movements. The naïve idealism of the children of this era is often at odds with the status quo. Ruth, the only daughter of coffee plantation owners, John and Alice Madison, has gone against her father’s wishes and must forsake the lush Owen Stanley Ranges of Papua New Guinea for the streets of working-class Sydney. She finds herself disgraced and alone in a foreign land and learns to live by her wits to avoid sinking into a life of prostitution and poverty — until circumstances take a turn for the worse.
Ruth’s son, Stewart, becomes her driving force. Wanting to make a better life for him, she leaves behind her hand-to-mouth existence in Sydney to work in the vast, rugged plains of Outback New South Wales. Here, she meets and marries the widowed Lachlan McGrath, owner of Bryliambone station.
Life on the land is good until fate turns Ruth’s world upside down, and she faces the loss of everything she has accomplished. Driven to provide for her children, she sets about rebuilding her husband’s debt-ridden business into a thriving cotton farm.
Just as her life is again coming together, news arrives of her father’s suspicious death. Ruth returns to the islands to sort out his affairs, only to face the shocking secrets that had fractured her family years before.
Ruth has elements of Lloyd Jones’ Mr Pip, Ruth Park’s The Harp in the South and Patricia Shaw’s The Feather and the Stone. The novel will appeal to readers interested in family relationships, exotic
Author’s Note: Inspiration for Ruth
My writing and drive to write is inspired by everyday people who find themselves faced with extraordinary events and circumstances. It is that something, within an individual, which propels them to deal with-and not be crushed by- life’s difficulties that I find so truly moving and fascinating. Ruth then, could be said to be an amalgam of some of the remarkable women I have met along life’s path. The setting for Ruth was inspired by my discovery, and shock, at the conditions that existed in Papua New Guinea while under the Australian administration. A situation that continued right up to the mid 1970s.
Reader’s Review
At 327 pages Ruth would be too long were it merely a love story with an interesting twist. However, this story of a young woman from her first sexual awakening to a new beginning in middle age is also the story of colonial racism in Australia in the fifties and the consequences of this racism that are passed on from one generation to the next. In addition to this major theme there are sub themes of classicism and sexism that come up in the stories of subsidiary characters Ruth encounters on her journey.
I’ve been known to say that while non-fiction makes us aware of social problems, fiction has more power to make us care about social problems. I should amend that to say that it is the stories of individuals more than statistics that create empathy and a passion to change what is wrong in our societies. So whether a story is fictional or real is not the issue here but whether it is compelling enough to inspire readers to want to do something about the injustices of racism, classicism, sexism as we recognize them around us in addition to helping us recognize them in the first place.
In Ruth, Marlene S. Lewis tells a fictional story that feels absolutely real and as a reader I feel like I could hear the voices of Ruth, Lindsay, Tommy, Joyce, Aggie, Shirley, Ali, Lachlan, Josh and others as if I’d known them. The author has mastered the craft of creating characters with the particular idiosyncracies that make them believable individuals, each and every one. She makes us know them, care about them, hear and respond to what they have to say. There is the usual disclaimer at the beginning that the book is a work of fiction and any resemblance of the characters to real people is purely coincidental. I would add that such resemblance is due to the author’s gifts of observation and insight. The style is matter of fact. Because the facts themselves are dramatic the author has no need to overdramatize events, she simply tells them and we are moved, sometimes shocked, at the simple recitation of the realistically imagined facts.
Because the book depicts so many realistic instances of important universal social issues, Ruth is a book I highly recommend to bookclubs who are looking for spirited discussion of the social dynamics that affect us all, everywhere at some time and all the time somewhere. ~ Sandra Shwayder Sanchez, Bookpleasures.com
Excerpt
The introductions went better than Ruth had anticipated; everyone seemed friendly. They cared a lot about Lachlan she realized; his happiness had somehow bought her acceptance from this group of strangers. Or so it seemed, until everyone’s attention abruptly turned to a raucous melee outside.
“Jessica twisted my arm!” the boy cried, as if his arm had been severed.
“Daddy, he called Stewart a half-caste,” an indignant Jessica protested, as the crowd recoiled in stunned silence.
“I think we should go and find some ice cream,” said Lachlan’s younger cousin, Kathleen, as she hustled the children away.
Ruth wanted to rush over and put her arms around Stewart. To tell him that the boy was just an ignorant yokel who knew no better, but she resisted. As hard as it was, Stewart would need to find his own way in the world, and she wouldn’t always be around to comfort him.
She watched as Jessica ran off with the two boys to get some ice cream. A child wouldn’t just come out and say such a thing, she reasoned; he must have overheard his parents talking. Returning to her husband’s side, Ruth smiled graciously. But she couldn’t let the incident pass.
“Kids!” she said, loud enough not to be missed by the other guests, “they repeat everything they hear at home.” The party resumed, but not before Ruth’s steely gaze caught the boy’s mother’s sheepish eye.
“Good on ya, luv. You got her good and proper, cheeky cow. I bet they been saying all sorts before they got ‘ere,” Joyce said.
“I hope they don’t all turn out to be like them,” Ruth said.
“Some of them seem nice. I was talking to Mabel over near the salads. She said that woman and her husband turn up for anything where there’s a free feed,” Aggie said.
“Lachlan said they only got an invite because they were at the club on his bucks’ night. He got drunk and invited everyone!” Ruth said.
“Oh well, that’s men for ya, luv; even the good ones have their moments.”
“You always make me laugh, Joyce, I’m so glad you came.”
“A bullock train wouldn’t have kept us away.” Joyce gave Ruth an extra big hug.
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