“A stunning force of a novel [with] honey-dipped prose, strikingly human characters, and a satisfying, soul-stirring conclusion that will stay with me for a long, long time.”
– Zakiya Harris, author of The Other Black Girl
“West breathes life into violence and mayhem like a poet on a new day. These are the stories we need to hear: voices of hope in a wilderness of pain.”
– Rene Denfeld, bestselling author of The Child Finder and The Butterfly Girl
Saving Ruby King, the incredible debut novel by Catherine Adel West, explores the bonds of female friendship, the road to redemption and the importance of the church in a black community in Chicago. Ruby King is a young girl who loses her mother, Alice, to murder. She has lived a difficult life and is searching for strength. While the church community suspects Ruby’s violent father, Lebanon, may have killed her mother, her best friend, Layla, is the only one who understands the danger Ruby may be in by living alone with Lebanon, and she is relentless in her support and protection of her best friend. Layla’s father, Jackson, the pastor of the church, knows Ruby’s family history and tells his daughter to steer clear, though.
There are long-kept secrets hiding the past, and through each of these characters, plus Cavalry, the church, we piece together the truth, giving us the full picture of the tragedies that have occurred and the violence that has been endured, as well as the fierce nature of loyalty between friends, although, as West writes, “more things than love bind people together, secrets and lies make just as hearty a bond as love.”
The story is steeped in the struggles of a community and the environment on the south side of Chicago:
“…a whole black world within a city; a world with only our people, who arrived barely a century ago in innumerable droves during the Great Migration, living in cramped tenements with the hope of more freedom than what was doled out down south. And now there is a weird dichotomy of stilted gentrification and unpredictable violence, and yet there’s tangible opportunity if one were to look beyond hasty misconceptions and blatant prejudices.”
It’s a world where the powers-that-be rarely tread and barely understand:
“Notorious for courting favor in urban communities during elections, white politicians often look painfully out of place and horribly off rhythm in an ocean of brown faces, uncomfortable being the minority in the room, aching to return to neighborhoods in the suburbs where everyone looks like them. It’s awkward to watch this. It’s funny too.”
And, strikingly, one where the combination of ineffective law enforcement and police brutality puts its citizens under constant threat:
“Their guns raised first, we all heard them shout ordered and we obeyed, but with the distinct fear all of us have when it comes to police, that no matter the level of compliance, we might still have our caramel-colored bodies riddled with bullets nonetheless.”
In all these ways and more, West delivers a powerful punch with Saving Ruby King. In addition to covering a lot of ground when it comes to important issues like racism, police brutality, domestic abuse and female friendship from a black woman’s perspective, it’s a moving story about a complex family, full of complex characters and rendered in beautiful prose.
I appreciated the map that illustrates Ruby and Layla’s family trees and I enjoyed the ride with these beautifully flawed, traditional families, their connection to the church and the glimpse they provide into life on the south side of Chicago.
Q & A WITH CATHERINE ADEL WEST
Q: You couldn’t have known that millions across the country and the world would be protesting police brutality toward people of color and spreading the message of #BlackLivesMatter during the month of your book release. How do you feel about the timing in regard to your debut?
A: I feel that it’s horrific that it again took the deaths of black men and women to essentially get the response that we should have been getting in terms of social justice, and to be honest, marching and protesting will only go so far as we need long-lasting, meaningful and systemic change in order to prevent more deaths like this.
The fact my book speaks on some of these issues (and the fact I started writing my book almost eight years ago) is testament that African Americans have always believed there are inherent problems in our law enforcement and judicial systems. My book and others are literary witness statements to the reality black and brown people live with daily.
Q: Have you seen the June 21 New York Times bestseller list for nonfiction and what are your thoughts? What are your hopes when it comes to the publishing industry and diversity?
A: I have of course seen the #BlackOutBestSeller hashtag and while it is a meaningful step towards a shift in publishing, it is only one step. There must be a top-down movement in terms of getting black people and other people of color into various departments and places of power in publishing. Our books and our institutions must reflect the make-up of our nation at large.
For me, I won’t use the term hope. I will say what must change is the perception of black writers and writers of color as one-dimensional people with only stories of trauma and hardship. Yes, our books can be about these things as we need to address issues within and surrounding our collective communities but we also need to see stories about black love, black culture, from romcom to mystery to science fiction to fantasy to literary fiction to nonfiction. Our stories are just as diverse as our people, and publishing at large needs to search out and cultivate these stories en mass.
Q: Saving Ruby King at its core is about a deep friendship, the bonds of loyalty and the experience of growing up in the church. How did you come up with the idea for the book? How long did it take you to write?
A: Saving Ruby King started out as something completely different. It was a way for me to understand the relationship I had with my father and how the black church played a role, for better or worse, in it. It evolved into a story of friendship, love, secrets and black father-daughter relationships we rarely see played out via literature or art at large. I’ve always been drawn to that aspect of Saving Ruby King. And to really craft a story such as this and get to the meat of what I actually wanted to be thematic elements, it took around five years, as I’d never written a book before and had no idea what I was doing. In the end, I think it served me in terms of how I played with story structure and character development and it also bestowed a fearlessness in how I approached the book.
Q: As the saying goes, The truth will set you free. Ruby is finally set free when she acknowledges her truth. Where does she get her strength?
A: I think Ruby gains strength from watching her mother struggle and seeing what repressing hurt and keeping secrets will do to you. And Ruby is a black woman. We are born with an innate sense of strength, period. From our ancestors to our parents, black women come into this world, into this nation, realizing our lives need to be a testament to our power, and black women, are above all, powerful. Recognizing our power is indeed a beautiful and sometimes tragic struggle, but there’s a victory in that. Ruby needed to go on her journey to realize these things.
Q: You were brought up in the church and live in Chicago, just like Ruby and Layla — which character do you relate to the most?
A: All of my characters have pieces of me within them so I refuse to pick one I relate to most; in all of their downsittings and uprisings they reflect the wonderful and not-so-wonderful parts of my nature.
Q: The church is such a big part of life for both families, and I really enjoyed the narration from Cavalry, the church building. How and when in the writing process did you decide to give the church a voice?
A: It had to have been on probably my third or fourth draft. I had a former coworker named Luke Salazar read it and he gave me the idea of making the church an actual character.
I loved it and ran with it because I love writing in a timeless, classic style, and you can’t really do that when you’re trying to speak on current issues and your characters live in a present-day urban city.
Writing Calvary into the book as a character let me creatively scratch an itch.
Q: If Saving Ruby King becomes a movie, (and I think it should!), who would you like to see in the cast?
A: I have so many thoughts on this and it can always change but I’d love to see something like this:
- Yara Shahidi (Black-ish, Grown-ish, The Sun Is Also a Star) as Ruby King
- Raven Goodwin (Good Luck Charlie, Being Mary Jane, SMILF) as Layla Potter
- Michael Ealy (Barbershop, 2 Fast 2 Furious, Think Like a Man, About Last Night) as Lebanon King
- Chi McBride (Boston Public, Pushing Daisies, Gone in 60 Seconds, I, Robot) or Christopher Jackson (Hamilton, Bull, Oz) as Jackson Potter
Q: What will you be working on next?
A: I’m working on a prequel to Saving Ruby King. It follows Lebanon’s mother, Sara, during her years in Memphis, Tennessee.
Q: What have you read lately that you recommend?
- A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
- Kindred by Octavia Butler
- The Chiffon Trenches by André Leon Talley
Saving Ruby King is available for purchase.
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About Catherine Adel West:
Catherine Adel West was born and raised in Chicago, IL, where she currently resides. She graduated with both her Bachelors and Masters of Science in Journalism from the University of Illinois – Urbana. Her work is published in Black Fox Literary Magazine, Five2One, Better than Starbucks, Doors Ajar, 805 Lit + Art, The Helix Magazine, Lunch Ticket and Gay Magazine. In between writing and traveling, Catherine works as an editor.
