Books like Probably Ruby — picked by fans

In these stripped-down stories, the minute observations are just as significant as the broader strokes the writer uses to depict the lives of refugees, people at the margins. Told mostly from the perspective of a Laotian adolescent, the characters are each trying to understand the steps they must take to fit into their new barricaded lives. In spite of the claustrophobia that encloses the characters, the stories are funny and tender. 

David Robertson is well known as an author for young readers, with two stunning picture books, a pile of graphic novels, and several amazing middle-grade novels to his name. All of those are also amazing! Yep, all of them. This book is the memoir of his experiences growing up in Canada, all explored through the lens of visiting his father’s trapline. Although a Swampy Cree man, he was initially taught to hide his identity, and what I most love about this work and all of Robertson’s work, is how his sense of identity now roots all of his writing. His message is urgent, necessary, and powerful; his words easy to read yet profound. The raw honesty of this memoir make it a terrific read.

This book pick is a dystopic novel about a young woman in a world that separates between those who are from the Gutter and those who are not. I love the intensity of this coming-of-age story, and the compelling writing and voice, for sure. But most of all I love the main character Elimina. She is smart and passionate, fierce and loving, and I defy any reader not to fall a bit in love with her. The world she’s born into pushes her down, and yet she rises above stigma and subverts society to become a beacon for those around her. Gutter Child is a heart-breaking and haunting book, filled with moments of beauty and brilliance.

Not-so-secretly I wish I lived in a fairy story (maybe other writers feel like this too?) This novel is a fairy story for adults in the bravest and most beautiful way. The book begins with a meteor shower and features a real centaur and a love story at its heart that spirals out and impacts the survivors of the end of the world. At least, it’s the end of one world. The characters in The Centaur’s Wife are vivid and true, and the gorgeous, strange story lingers with me all the time, reminding me to be braver on the page and in the world.

I absolutely loved this novel, not just for the craft (the writing is beautiful), but for the suspense created when a troubled man eavesdrops on a psychologist’s sessions.

Fascinated with one particular client, he gets deeply and actively involved in her search for identity and her ties to Nazi Germany. As a practicing psychologist, I tried, unsuccessfully I might add, to imagine how I would handle a similar situation.

Set in my town, 1970’s San Francisco during a tumultuous era marked by psychedelics, feminism, and the Zodiac killer, I even recognized the building where Ullman’s fictional psychologist practices because some of my colleagues have offices there.

First off, Ito is just a masterful storyteller. If she had to write about restocking shelves at a grocery store, Ito would make it riveting and hilarious. So, just reading her writing is a highly engaging joy. Second, this story is epic. This is Ito’s story of finding her birth mother and the challenges, joys, and heartbreak of that reunion as she herself became a mother.

What I love most about Ito’s story is that she effortlessly threads the needle of being real and raw yet funny and relatable at the same time. Whether you are a mom, dad, childless, adopted, or not, you will enjoy this journey.

This recommendation returns to one of my most passionate interests—that of adopted children and the families they are placed in. Beatty is a poet and this is reflected in her memoir—it is not the usual chronological narrative as most memoirs are. She breaks the myth of the “special” or “chosen baby” to tell her truth of the lives of adopted children. Beatty exposes, through vignettes and her poetry, her meetings with her birth mother, her adopted family, her attempts to know who she is and where she came from. She breaks open the belief that you can “create” a perfect family using children from other birth mothers, when all her life, she feels, is a lie and she has no grounding in the world. This memoir is her quest to find out who she is.

Hata, a Korean, adopted by a Japanese couple, serves the Japanese Army as a medic in World War II. His job is to care for enslaved Koreans who serve as “comfort women” to Japanese soldiers. His experiences are the material of nightmares. Years later he leads a deceptively quiet life in a small town in New Jersey with his Korean adoptive daughter. It is deceptively quiet because his unresolved war experiences, presented in flashbacks, haunt him. I admired the abrupt manner in which Chang-Rae Lee interrupted Hata’s uneventful life with horrific memories.

The author’s method felt like the triggering of those who have suffered trauma and continue to relive events as PTSD. This approach of interweaving past with present inspired my depiction of a young German woman living a quiet life on a primitive Icelandic farm, milking the cows and raking the hay, while being repeatedly interrupted by memories of… show more.

Because of my own work as an adoption writer and advocate for open adoption records, I knew each of these writers from webinars, podcasts, conferences, and social media. Combining their varied backgrounds and experiences–Sara is an adoptee, Kelsey is a birth parent, and Lori is an adoptive parent–was thrilling to read.

I devoured each of the thoughtful interviews and the candid responses the authors compiled and presented. Like these authors, I believe that by working together with truth and transparency, it is possible to move adoption forward toward a healing place.

The bloodthirsty roses, Isra the blind beauty, and Gem the intriguing beast. It was an intriguing combo that first made me pick up this book and start the beginning of this adventure. That isn't to say that this book is all sweetness, there are most definitely moments that had me seething with anger. The way the 'perfect' Smooth Skins treated the flawed one of their own kind, and the Monstrous struggling to survive outside the dome. But by far my most favorite part was how Gem and Isla bonded over gardening together. Yes, it was originally a lie so that Gem could gather information to help his own people, but it turned into some of the most character-building scenes that tied the whole story together in a rose-shaped bow.