Unspoken brings to life a resilient eleven-year-old girl, Ruby Lee Becker, whose family and farm are trapped in the double whammy of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. The recurrent dust storms kill her baby sister and grandmother and leave Ruby with weakened lungs. To save Ruby’s life, her father packs her off to Waco, Texas, to live with an aunt. Ruby, though, internalizes the feeling that she’s sent away because she caused the deaths of her baby sister and grandmother. Ruby’s mother, Willa Mae, devastated by the triple loss of two daughters and her own mother, sinks into a devastating depression and is committed to an insane asylum by her husband.
When her aunt dies, Ruby is placed in a state home for children. I particularly enjoyed her unexpected friendship with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. After twenty years of struggling to return home, Ruby rebuilds the family’s farm, hoping to reunite the family, and becomes a crop duster.
The story is told in chronological order, with sections separated by year, and from two points of view, Ruby and her mother. Much of the mother’s POV is told through her journaling while at the Wichita Falls State Hospital, where she reflects upon her life as a future artist who studies with Georgia O’Keeffe. Instead, Willa marries a Texas Panhandle farmer. These journal entries are all italicized, and reading that much italicized print was difficult.
Unspoken, book one of the proposed Dust series, ends in a cliffhanger with Ruby about to marry a man who’s really not suited for her and, having rescued her mother from the state hospital, hoping to reunite with her mother once her mind clears from electroshock and other horrific treatments while an inmate.
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Unspoken (Black Rose Writing, July 3, 2025) is available through:
Your local independent bookseller | Amazon | Barnes & Noble
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