GodPretty in the Tobacco Field

March 7, 2016
Richardson’s (Liar’s Bench) deft second novel paints a picture of the hard life and bright dreams of young RubyLyn Bishop in Nameless, Ky., during the summer of 1969. Fifteen-year-old RubyLyn was orphaned young and is now the charge of her uncle, Gunnar Royal, a man with a harsh and rigid moral code. Henny Stump, her best friend, is so poor that her family resorts to selling their new baby. Her other neighbors, Beau Crockett and his three boys, are trouble. The only bright spots in her life are her secret love of Rainey Ford, her uncle’s field hand, the beautiful paper fortune tellers that she draws and folds, and her hope to win the $200 prize for her lush tobacco plants at the Kentucky State Fair. With the prize money, she plans to move to the big city of Louisville. Facing reality is never as easy as dreaming, but RubyLyn’s will may prove stronger than the grasp of Nameless. Richardson skillfully develops RubyLyn’s plight in this tale steeped in the tobacco hills of Kentucky.

March 15, 2016
Her parents dead, 15-year-old RubyLyn lives with her stern, unbending Uncle Gunnar on their tobacco farm near the small town of Nameless, Kentucky. The year is 1969 and RubyLyn dreams of moving to the city, where she can pursue a career as a professional artist and where she can be free to marry Rainey, her uncle's African American field hand. But how can she make this happen? Her uncle denigrates her art, and, if he knew about her secret feelings for Rainey, he would surely forbid any kind of relationship. And then Rainey is drafted. Setting is everything in this crossover novel of the poverty-stricken region RubyLyn calls home. The reader learns a great deal about the impact of President Johnson's War on Poverty in rural Kentucky and, equally, about the place of women in that society in the late 1960s. Though the novel takes a turn to the soap-operatic as the plot develops, RubyLyn and Rainey remain sympathetic characters for whom readers will wish a happy ending.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)