Sparkles with ‘Ruby’
The mermaid young adult novel I’m working on strangely came alive once it took the literary fiction path. Originally, during brainstorming, the novel would sound realistically imaginary, but once I chose the setting, the story became deeper. Now, I’m reading more literary fiction — my top genre anyway — to better study the art of the writing.
I recently completed “Ruby” by Cynthia Bond (book review here), and the story was intense, poignant. I read it on Kindle, where the ebook highlights passages, but this story had numerous passages I wanted to highlight, but then one jutted out from the rest because it connected to a moment in my novel.
The two main characters are Ruby Bell, an emotionally broken woman trying to survive a life of rape, and Ephram Jennings, a naive man who wants to love her despite her shortcomings. In the passage, it tells the story of Ephram’s grandmother saying goodbye to his mother once she marries the untrustworthy Reverend Jennings. It’s a motherly goodbye when a child moves onto a stage of adulthood.
“Your daddy and me named you Otha. It means ‘wealth.’ You were your daddy’s treasure from the time you were born until he died. He used to say there were rubies buried deep inside of you. Remember, baby, don’t never let a man mine you for your riches. Don’t let him take a pickax to that treasure in your soul. Remember, they can’t get it until you give it to them. They might lie and try to trick you out of it, baby, and they’ll try. They might lay a hand on you, or worse, they might break your spirit, but the only way they can get it is to convince you it’s not yours to start with. To convince you there’s nothing there but a lump of coal.” — Marilyn Daniels aka Otha Jennings’ mother in “Ruby” by Cynthia Bond
In my novel, with elements from Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale classic, the girl’s grandmother gives her a gold necklace on her 16th birthday. One reason I stepped back from the novel I started last summer was the dialogue was lacking, and I couldn’t find the characters’ voices. The moment was stuck with a simple quote from the grandmother, nothing like the above quote in “Ruby,” but when I read the passage, I realized my passage needed improvement with realness in the emotion.
So I’m restructuring that part along with other previous parts, now that my story is a tad more fleshed out. And still looking for sparkles in the novel I’m currently reading.
