Ruby (Andrews Novel) - Plot Summary

Plot Summary

Ruby is a young teenager who has lived her entire life with her grandmother Catherine, a traiteur (a Cajun folk healer) because her mother had died giving birth to her. They live in Houma, a small swamp village in Louisiana. Ruby is an artist and has already sold some of her paintings to a gallery in New Orleans from their roadside stand for tourists. Her grandfather Jack lives in a separate shack, having been thrown out by her grandmother when Ruby was just a baby.

Ruby begins a relationship with Paul Tate, who belongs to one of Houma's richer families. Paul's parents don’t approve of the relationship and Ruby thinks that it is because she is poor. Only after Grandmere Catherine sees that the relationship is getting serious does she tell Ruby the truth - that Paul is her half brother. Ruby's mother, Gabrielle, was raped by Paul's father, Octavius, just before she graduated. In 1950s Louisiana, Gabrielle could not abort the baby legally but her father Jack blackmailed Paul's father, Octavious to take the child in order to keep it secret from the town and was forced to give it up to Gladys Tate, Octavius's wife, while her father was paid to stay silent. Sad and angry at this, Ruby does what is right and breaks up with Paul, with whom she was falling in love. Soon after, Ruby's grandmother gets sick and passes away. After her death Ruby admits the truth of their shared maternal parentage to Paul, explaining that to be the reason that she ended their budding romantic relationship.

Shortly before Grandmere Catherine's death, she tells Ruby the truth about her parents: Ruby's mother become pregnant as a result of an affair with a rich Creole man named Pierre Dumas. Pierre was married, so he and Gabrielle agreed that the child would stay and live with Gabrielle in the bayou. But Grandpere Jack made a secret deal with Pierre's father to sell the child to the Dumas family for a large amount of money, while Pierre's barren wife, Daphne, would pretend to be pregnant. Grandmere Catherine knew that it was going to be twins, but she never told Jack or Gabrielle. When the time came, she gave the first baby to Grandpere Jack and kept the second baby, Ruby. When Jack saw Ruby he wanted to sell her, too, yelling that they could get twice the amount of money for two babies. At this, Catherine threw him out and told him to never come back. Exhausted by giving birth to two babies, Gabrielle survived long enough to see Ruby and name her, then died. Grandmere Catherine's only wish was for Ruby to find her real father. She had been selling Ruby's paintings in the hope that Pierre Dumas would see the signature and become curious. After Catherine's death, Ruby has no one left in the bayou now except Grandpere Jack. She overhears him making a deal with his drinking buddy Buster Trahaw that she can be his common-law wife. Terrified, Ruby runs away to New Orleans to find her father, knowing only that he lives in the Garden District. With the help of a woman she meets on the bus, Ruby finds her father's address and goes to his house. Standing at the door she meets Beau Andreas. He takes her into the house, mistaking her for her twin sister Giselle, who has grown up in the lap of luxury. Although Beau and Daphne are both taken in by the resemblance, Pierre immediately recognises that Ruby is not Giselle. After Ruby explains what has happened, he agrees that she can come and live with them.

Ruby is accepted immediately by her father but not by her twin sister or stepmother, Daphne. The Dumases concoct a story that Ruby was kidnapped as a baby from the hospital. Ruby is thus brought into Creole society. Giselle, threatened by Ruby's intelligence and similarity, is extremely cruel to her and deliberately gets her in trouble, which does not improve Daphne's opinion of her. Beau Andreas is Giselle's boyfriend, but Ruby and Beau become romantically close, eventually sleeping together when Ruby sketches Beau's portrait. This drives a further wedge between Ruby and her sister. All the while Daphne is doing anything she can to get rid of Ruby because she is a constant reminder to her of Pierre's affair. Giselle gets a new boyfriend, Martin Fowler. They get into a car accident, which cripples Giselle and kills Martin. This sends Pierre into a depression. He starts drinking heavily and locks himself away in his study, gazing at a picture of Jean, his younger brother, who was brain damaged after an accident. Discovering Ruby's naked sketch of Beau, Daphne has Ruby imprisoned in a mental hospital as a nymphomaniac, but Ruby escapes with the help of an inmate, after meeting her uncle Jean. She manages to tell her father what Daphne did to her. She reassures him that Jean is not a hopeless case, but the family must stop lying. She wants to be able to tell the truth about where she came from, and tell Giselle about their real mother. Pierre agrees that they must all be more truthful with each other, but decides that it is best for the twins to go away for school in Baton Rouge in order to let the dust settle.