Skip to main content

Book Review: The Sound of Gravel

I've been in a book hangover this week and so now I must share with you the book that did me in: 



Memoirs like this just don't happen everyday. Can you imagine pointing pen to paper and sharing your most private worries, your most traumatic experiences and the scariest, saddest moments of your life? Or what about reliving moments where you were scared, lost and worried? All of these things happen to Ruth, all before she is a teenager. 

The daughter of a polygamist, Ruth is lost among a sea of her family's life- she is one of over 40 siblings, most of whom she doesn't know exists until she is older. She learns at a very young age that without her help, her mother would not be able to handle her siblings, 2 of who are developmentally disabled.  They live in a dirt house with no electricity and have to navigate life with a "father" who divides his time among his multiple wives...

Because they live the polygamist lifestyle, Ruth's mother lives in Mexico, but once a month they make the illegal trip back to the States to gather food stamps and social security checks.

And when Ruth suffers unspeakable abuse from her stepfather, her life becomes even more of a struggle. 

There are things that Ruth, her siblings and her mother have to experience that I can't imagine anyone having to endure. But amazingly, Ruth becomes this amazing mother figure to her little sisters and brothers and she is so observing to those around her, which makes her this smart, empathetic and perceptive person that I would just die to sit down and have a heart-to-heart with. 

Because of her ability to survive, to care for her loved ones and for gaurdian angels like her grandparents, she is able to change her life...which at one point faced an outcome that could have been much, much different if Ruth wasn't the brave, smart girl that she was born to be... 

Read it. 

Currently, I am trying to get out of my slump by listening to Pretty Girls on audible and reading The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend. I'm also slowly taking in Joyce Carol Oates' The Lost Landscape, which is unsurprisingly beautiful. Next up is When Breath Becomes Air and For The Love 


And P.S. I totally didn't mean for my most perfect Kate Spade travel coffee mug to make it into both of the pics in this blog. It was complete happenstance, but a completely cute coincidence that I'm not even sad about. 



Comments

  1. Love this mug!

    -Betsy
    www.goldwilldigger.com

    ReplyDelete
  2. That sounds like an interesting read for sure!

    ReplyDelete
  3. ohh, thans for presenting this book to us. it sounds really, really interesting and I have never heard about it before.
    Good luck with your reading slump. I've read The Readers of Broken Wheel recommend and it was fun, hope it will help!

    ReplyDelete
  4. This sounds like an incredible book! Just added it to my book list now x

    Megan | http://www.megaanalicec.blogspot.co.uk

    ReplyDelete
  5. This actually sounds really good! Sad, but good.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I will add this one to my list. Love that mug btw!

    ReplyDelete
  7. That book sounds heavy, but also inspiring and interesting. I'm going to look for it.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Need to add this to my collection, sounds moving!

    Meme x

    www.thedayinthelifeof.co.uk

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book Review: The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware

Ruth Ware always delivers when it comes to interesting and layered characters. The Turn of the Key is a thrilling account of Rowan Caine's experience as a live-in nanny in a luxurious smart home unlike anything she has ever seen. This mystery is the epitome of the saying "if it's too good to be true, it probably is" because even though moving into the home of the Elincourts is an upgrade from her tiny apartment and dead-end job, it comes at a steep price. Every chapter, there is something suspicious that kept me wondering if anyone in this suspenseful book was telling the truth. Which, is obvious in the first page because Rowan is writing a letter to a lawyer, from jail, because she's being held for murder. Who is Rowan? Did she come into the Elincourt's lives for a reason? She should have known something was wrong on the day she interviewed, when one of the children warned her to never come back. With a house full of surveillance cameras and parents who ar

Historical Fiction Recommendations

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Jennifer 📚 (@thats_what_she_read) on Jul 12, 2019 at 4:01pm PDT Raise your hand if you’re in the mood for a great  #historicalfiction  ! ⁣ randomhouse   #partner ⁣ } ⁣ The last HF I read was  # Montauk  by Nicola Harrison. It was a nice vacation! ⁣ ⁣ Here are the next two that are on my list: ⁣ TIME AFTER TIME By Lisa Grunwald (out now)⁣ A magical love story, inspired by the legend of a woman who vanished from Grand Central Terminal, sweeps readers from the 1920s to World War II and beyond. ⁣ On a clear December morning in 1937, at the famous gold clock in Grand Central Terminal, Joe Reynolds, a hardworking railroad man from Queens, meets a vibrant young woman who seems mysteriously out of place. Nora Lansing is a Manhattan socialite whose flapper clothing, pearl earrings, and talk of the Roaring Twenties don’t seem to match the bleak mood of Depression-era New York

Book Review: The Reckless Oath Me Made by Bryn Greenwood

When a young woman is facing an unsteady future, layered on top of a very troubled past, the last thing she has time for is the strange young man who speaks in Middle English and is always following her around. Zee ignores him just fine until her sister goes missing and everything in her life is uncertain and she has no choice but to trust Gentry Frank.  "Zee may not be a princess, but Gentry is an actual knight, complete with sword, armor and a code of honor. Two years ago the voices he hears in his head called him to be Zee's champion. Both shy and autistic, he's barely spoken to her since, but has kept watch, ready to come to her aid."  The layers of this book are peeled away one by one, making it a deeply emotional and transient novel. Zee's character is complicated- she is sharp, deeply scarred but unabashedly brazen and brave. What I loved about her most was how trusted her gut even when she didn't have solid ground to stand on. Her mother is a hoard