Welcome to my Sunday Book Review. Today I’m reviewing – A Virtuous Woman by Kaye Gibbons. A story about love and grief.
Blurb:
A “vivid, unsentimental, powerful” portrait of a Southern marriage by the New York Times–bestselling author of Ellen Foster (Publishers Weekly).
“She hasn’t been dead four months and I’ve already eaten to the bottom of the deep freeze. I even ate the green peas. Used to I wouldn’t turn my hand over for green peas . . .”
Ruby Stokes has died too young and left her husband, Blinking Jack, behind. With alternating entries from each of them, A Virtuous Woman recounts the tale of their years together in an “exquisitely realised piece of writing” (Elizabeth Buchan, The Mail on Sunday).
From their very different backgrounds—Ruby a daughter of wealth, Jack a penniless tenant farmer—to their relationships with their landlord and his family, and the strength they drew from each other in the face of hardship, this story of a marriage is “full of fantastically gritty metaphors . . . A book that will change your dreams” (The Observer).
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My 5 Star Review:
Blinking Jack Stokes and Ruby Pitt Woodrow came from two different backgrounds. Jack was a tenant farmer who never owned anything, and Ruby, from southern gentry, brought up proper, but made her own choices in life. After becoming a widow after a young and brutal marriage, Ruby never turned back and took a job in a wealthy home with the Hoovers.
The story of Jack and Ruby is told through alternating chapters by both. The book begins with Jack telling of Ruby’s death from lung cancer. Jack was twenty years Ruby’s senior. They kind of fell into each other’s lives and formed a strong bond, despite the lack of lustful love. Two lovers with very different backgrounds. Ruby was already a young widow who suffered a brutal relationship with John. Too proud to go back home after her disasterous runaway marriage, she took a job at the wealthy Hoover’s home for work, and that’s where she met Jack. Their deep love and respect for each other is evoked through their stories.
Jack grieves, missing his Ruby, and awaits the time he’s back with her throughout his story in this heartfelt tale of love, determination, and going against the grain for what the heart wants. He waits for Ruby to come visit in his dreams. This is a story of simple love and ultimately, grief.
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As a person who has experienced great loss in my own life, my heart went out to Jack for his undying love for his beloved Ruby.
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This phrase Jack says later in the book, so resonated as Jack comments about how he handles his grief:
“Yes, it’s a plenty of ways to stay out from under a woman, stay drunk, stay in front of the television, neither way you don’t think, don’t feel nothing.”
Later on when looking for Jack, a friend discovers him buried in bed wrapped around sheets smelling like lilac dust and asks Jack what that smell is. “You want to know? It’s lilac dusting powder. You want to know what else? I put it all on these sheets last night, thinking she’d like it. I bet you’d have loved to’ve seen me in here sprinkling like a goddamn fool. And you know why? I honest to God believed she was coming back to me.”
©DGKaye2025
Blurb:
DGKayewriter.com 