The black sheep of her troubled family, Ruth struggles to keep the peace between her mother, her young son, and her slightly off-the-wall husband and to put the pieces back together when a heated situation boils over Ruth says right off: "I tell myself that it should be simple to see through to the past now that I'm set loose, now that I can invent my own words, but nothing much has come my way without a price." In Ruth's story, which takes place in a rural town in Illinois sometime in the mid-twentieth century, it's detail, not the big picture, that governs. There is her body that refuses to be beautiful like those the magazines show, her mother's unrelenting anger and bitterness, her distant and disturbed father, her handsome and heartless brother, her friends no one else likes, her love for a crazy man who loves her back like no one else ever did, her correspondence with Aunt Sid who believes in her. Telling her story is a struggle: "We were the products of our limited vocabulary: we had no words for savory odors or the colors of the winter sky or the unexpected compulsion to sing." With Aunt Sid's help, Ruth survives to recount her amazingly ordinary life-story - including relentless hours of unrewarding hard work, the pain of recurrent disappointment, and vicious violence - with extraordinary dignity and daring. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14 . -- From 500 Great Books by Women ; review by Jesse Larsen