Named a
Washington Post
Top 10 Fiction Book of 2025
A
New York Times
Editors' Choice Pick!
“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.