Love, Ruby Lavender

Though Wiles was born in Alabama, her parents hailed from Mississippi, and she spent many summers there as a girl. During these summers, she interacted with extended family and several other Southern small-town personalities, and “Today she writes about them and they live on in her stories” (“Bio.” Deborah Wiles). She has published 11 books for readers of various ages, including the Aurora County Quartet, four coming-of-age novels set in the American South. Love, Ruby Lavender is the first book in the quartet. It has been nominated for 32 state book awards. Wiles has amassed additional accolades for her entire body of work, including picture books and a new subgenre she calls “documentary novels” about the 1960s.

Wiles enjoys taking risks in her writing, “making up new structures, rebelling against the standard norms, and flexing [her] voice in new ways, all in service of the story [she] want[s] to write” (Leitich Smith, Cynthia. “Career Achievers: Deborah Wiles on Thriving as a Long-Time, Actively Publishing Children’s-YA Author.” Cynsations). Though Love, Ruby Lavender is a work of realistic fiction that does not break the genre’s mold, the novel does demonstrate Wiles’s playful authorial attitude through its combination of narrative, epistolary, and even news styles. Ruby’s and Eula’s letters crisscross the country, creating dramatic irony and, at times, humor when they overlap or when Ruby’s presentation of reality differs from fact. Newspaper columns often shed light on recent events in the town. For example, the newspaper reports what a monumental event it is for someone from a town of 400 people to travel to Hawaii and that the death of Ruby’s chicks was an accident rather than an act of deliberate malice. The combination of narrative, letter-writing, and news styles enhances the text’s realism and sheds light on the characters, creating drama and humor amid discussions of life’s challenges and sorrows.

Wiles believes in the advice offered by one of her publishers, who told her “Write about what’s breaking your heart” (Leitich Smith). Wiles follows this advice in Love, Ruby Lavender. In the text, Ruby grapples with grief after the death of her beloved grandfather and the guilt she assumes for her role in his accident, the fear that Melba will reveal this guilt, and her anger at Melba’s meanness. She learns that people deal with grief and loss in different ways and sometimes those methods are quite unlike her own. With the help of her peacemaking friend, Dove, Ruby develops empathy but resists extending it to Melba, who lost her father in the same accident. Ruby struggles to empathize with her grandmother, who still grieves her husband, a year after his unexpected death.

When the tables turn, and Melba finds herself accidentally responsible for Ruby’s chicks’ death, Melba realizes how horrible Ruby must have felt in believing herself to be indirectly responsible for the men’s accident. Ruby knows how awful it is to be blamed for an accident. Awareness of their pain and aching losses—even at the tender age of nine—compels the girls to empathize with one another and move past their resentment to acknowledge life’s “sourness” in addition to its sweetness. Life breaks one’s heart sometimes, and Wiles doesn’t shy away from exposing young readers to its challenges and triumphs.