Drowning Ruth

Schwarz, Christina; Christina Schwarz

ISBN 10: 0385502532 / ISBN 13: 9780385502535

Published by Doubleday/ A Division of Random House, Inc., New York, 2000

About this Item

338 pp. Solidly bound copy and dj with moderate external wear, crisp pages and clean text.

Seller Inventory # 1ivCe0034

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Drowning Ruth
• Publisher: Doubleday/ A Division of Random House, Inc., New York
• Publication Date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0385502532
• ISBN 13: 9780385502535
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Pei Loi Koay (Book Design); Timothy Hsu (Jacket Design); Jerry Bauer (Author Photo)
• Edition: 1st Edition Sep 2000
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
• Seller catalogs:
  • Fiction-Fictional Novel, Literary Fiction & Novel
  • Fiction-Epic & Historical Fiction & Novel

About this title

Synopsis

Deftly written and emotionally powerful, Drowning Ruth is a stunning portrait of the ties that bind sisters together and the forces that tear them apart, of the dangers of keeping secrets and the explosive repercussions when they are exposed. A mesmerizing and achingly beautiful debut.
Winter, 1919. Amanda Starkey spends her days nursing soldiers wounded in the Great War. Finding herself suddenly overwhelmed, she flees Milwaukee and retreats to her family's farm on Nagawaukee Lake, seeking comfort with her younger sister, Mathilda, and three-year-old niece, Ruth. But very soon, Amanda comes to see that her old home is no refuge--she has carried her troubles with her. On one terrible night almost a year later, Amanda loses nearly everything that is dearest to her when her sister mysteriously disappears and is later found drowned beneath the ice that covers the lake. When Mathilda's husband comes home from the war, wounded and troubled himself, he finds that Amanda has taken charge of Ruth and the farm, assuming her responsibility with a frightening intensity. Wry and guarded, Amanda tells the story of her family in careful doses, as anxious to hide from herself as from us the secrets of her own past and of that night.
Ruth, haunted by her own memory of that fateful night, grows up under the watchful eye of her prickly and possessive aunt and gradually becomes aware of the odd events of her childhood. As she tells her own story with increasing clarity, she reveals the mounting toll that her aunt's secrets exact from her family and everyone around her, until the heartrending truth is uncovered.
Guiding us through the lives of the Starkey women, Christina Schwarz's first novel shows her compassion and a unique understanding of the American landscape and the people who live on it.

About the Author

Christina Schwarz grew up in Wisconsin. She and her husband live in Los Angeles, where she is at work on her second novel