Named a Wall Street Journal Top 10 Book of 2025 Named a
Washington Post Top 10 Fiction Book of 2025
Named a Best Book of the Year by
Vulture, Marie Claire and
Vanity Fair "I loved RUTH."--Lorde
"It would never work out, but I'm in love with Ruth."--Ron Charles,
The Washington Post "A wonderful, loving, tenderly teasing and often moving portrait ... [a] standout."
--Sam Sacks
, Wall Street Journal
"There are inklings of greatness in Kate Riley's first novel... I suspect it will become an underground classic."--Dwight Garner,
The New York Times In this mesmerizing and profound novel, the arc of a woman's life in a devout, insular community challenges our deepest assumptions about what infuses life with meaning.
Ruth is raised in a snow globe of Christian communism, a world without private property, television, or tolerance for idle questions. Every morning she braids her hair and wears the same costume, sings the same breakfast song in a family room identical to every other family room in the community; every one of these moments is meant to be a prayer, but to Ruth they remain puzzles. Her life is seen in glimpses through childhood, marriage, and motherhood, as she tries to manage her own perilous curiosity in a community built on holy mystery. Is she happy? Might this in fact be happiness?
Ruth immerses us in an experience that challenges our most fervent beliefs.