Finding Ruby: The Bright and Dark Sides of a Family's Fervent Idealism

A long-lost family history. A war fought in the name of justice. A legacy shaped by hope, sacrifice, and contradiction.
 
Richard Rothman never met his grandfather, a young Jewish New Yorker who left behind his wife and young daughter to fight in the Spanish Civil War and never came home. For decades, his absence was wrapped in family myth: a tale of selfless heroism in the fight against fascism.
 
But when Rothman, a respected New York attorney, uncovers a hidden trove of letters and documents in a family briefcase, a deeper history begins to unfold. Through reading intimate correspondence and piecing it together within the context of history, Rothman begins the journey toward understanding the idealistic and complex choices his ancestors made.
 
What starts as an attempt to understand a missing ancestor develops into a sweeping, heartfelt historical investigation of legacy, idealism, and politics, revealing how even the noblest causes can be entwined with blind spots and compromise.
 
Finding Ruby traces Rothman's journey through family memory and historical record, from the trenches of Spain (where international volunteers fought in the name of justice, often guided by the Communist Party) to the segregated courtrooms of the American South, where his uncle played a pivotal role in the historic Scottsboro Boys case.
 
With clarity, compassion, and the precision of a prosecutor, Rothman explores the tension between pride and truth, inherited story and documented fact, and the pitfalls that can befall fervent idealists. What emerges is a powerful reckoning -- not just with his own family's past, but with the political ideals that shaped a generation, and their urgent echoes in today's polarized world.
 
For readers of Daniel Mendelsohn, Adam Hochschild, and Ariel Sabar, Finding Ruby is a moving, timely memoir that asks: What do we inherit? What do we carry forward? And what must we uncover for ourselves to truly understand the past?
 
In a time when history is being contested, reframed, and weaponized, Finding Ruby reminds us why revisiting the past with honesty and empathy has never been more vital.

Richard Rothman is a New York-based lawyer. Following a successful career at one of the country's preeminent law firms, since 2017 he has devoted his professional time to representing pro bono clients, including survivors of human trafficking and domestic violence. He co-chairs the Incarcerated Gender Violence Survivors Initiative, as well as the board of Graham Windham, the nation's oldest non-sectarian child welfare agency. During the course of his career, he has served as President of the Federal Bar Foundation, Director of New York City's Legal Aid Society, Trustee and Counsel to the Board of the American Red Cross of Greater New York, and Chairman of Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts. In 2023, he received the New York Law Journal's Lifetime Achievement Award. In addition to various legal publications, Rothman has written about a variety of topics ranging from the wonders of loons, and his love for the New York City subways, to battling cancer at richrothman.com.