Booklist likes it too! Feeling super grateful this week.
Saving Ruth
Fishman, Zoe (Author)
May 2012. 304 p. Morrow, paperback, $14.99. (9780062059840)
Home from college for the summer with her Jewish family in small-town Alabama, Ruth Wasserman gets a job with her older brother, David, coaching and lifeguarding small kids at the local pool. She is happy to have lost excess weight, a lot of it. Everyone says she is too skinny, but she obsesses: Is it enough? And what is going on with soccer-star David: Why is he so distant? This could be a YA novel, but adult readers, especially parents, will also be caught up in Ruth’s wry personal narrative about friends, boyfriends, prejudice, self-image, and especially family secrets. Ruth saves a little black girl from drowning in the pool, but why did David miss it? Will the child’s family sue for damages? Ruth covers up for David, until, finally, the star brother reveals his failures. Never heavy-handed, the dialogue is right on, and so are Ruth’s hidden battles with her eating disorder.
— Hazel Rochman