Ruby and Ephram are so broken that the King March on Washington might as well have never happened and the Civil Rights Act never been passed. Like Ephram, Ruby has a terrible past: she never knew her father, her mother abandoned her at three, and she had been given to a white woman who ran a house which trafficked in young girls. Celia had been Ephram’s mother since he was a young child, but unlike most mothers, she cannot let him go. Ephram is a compromised man: he is slow of speech, and although a big man, he is the kind of person people hardly see. Their mother was early in their childhood committed to an insane asylum and some years later their father was lynched in the woods. They have a connection, he is sure.Įphram is the kind of man with many things “locked in the storehouse of his soul.” He lives with his sister Celia, the older sister whom he calls Mama, the sister who has taken care of him since they lost both their parents. Her real attention is devoted solely to the haunts who appear to her every night and the fear she has on their behalf - spirit children whom she feels need her protection.Įleven years into this descent, a man that Ruby also knew as a child, Ephram Jennings, decides he wants to claim Ruby as his own, wants to court her, wants to honor her former beauty, wants to re-establish a childhood connection, or wants to save her - take your pick.
Part of her squalor is the fact she does not interact meaningfully with anyone, part of the squalor is the filth in which this once-gorgeous woman now lives, and part of the squalor is that she does not fight off the men who regularly appear to prostitute her. For the next eleven years, she lives in increasing squalor in a shack her grandfather had owned. During her trip from Manhattan, her hallucinations intensify, and by the time she reaches Liberty Township, she has cracked. For some time, she has been troubled by a reappearing delusion - a small child who seems to haunt her. Her startling beauty and sophistication is an illusion, however. She has traveled from Manhattan back to Liberty Township for the funeral of a childhood friend. In 1963, beautiful, black, sophisticated Ruby Bell returns to her all-black, East Texas hometown.
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