Some Days There's Pie
A Novel
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2.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Ruth Ritchie elopes with a stereo salesman, thinking that she has found her ticket out of Summerville, Tennessee where her future means selling pies at Durwood's Hardware. But Chuck "gets religion," and Ruth, who cherishes her freedom more than safety, buys a used car and heads north.
When Ruth faints from hunger at a North Carolina five-and-dime, Rose, a feisty elderly reporter, rescues her. A friendship stronger than family ties blossoms; for all her bravado, unsentimental Ruth can never quite disguise her need for a mother's love. In Ruth, Rose finds someone who refuses to see old age as a handicap, and gives her life new purpose.
With spirited humor and empathy, Landis beautifully intertwines the unforgettable stories of Rose, in stubborn denial of lung cancer, and Ruth, who possesses the energy and conviction of Rose in her younger days.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Alternately wise, poignant, droll and sassy, this debut charts the life-changing friendship of two singular Southern women. Tennessee-born Ruth turns 20 in the course of their relationship; Rose, from Texas, is 80 and dying of lung cancer. But it almost doesn't matter where they are on the time line: all their energy goes into getting the moment right, whether they're rescuing graffiti poet Cecil from the cops, spoiling awful Fred Fish's scam to build private boat canals at public expense by calling them mosquito control ditches, or savoring fried crab sandwiches. Unsentimental women who spurn birthday cakes, heaven and everlasting love, both are runaways from true believers Ruth, for example, is escaping her churchy husband, Chuck, who had helped her leave a mother wedded to despair. The women meet by chance in a Lawsonville, N.C., five-and-ten, and Rose gets Ruth a receptionist job at the Lawsonville Ledger, where the octogenarian former ace reporter now hustles ads. Eventually, Ruth repays Rose by snatching her from a loving but smothering daughter, Carol, a nurse who wants Rose to quit smoking, take her pills and die by the book. Chronic escape artists able to tolerate some intimacy with each other only because they're both big on boundaries, Ruth and Rose never duck a challenge. Landis does a fine job of rendering these memorable characters, two iconoclasts on a quest to live big until they die.
