RUBY

---

Ruby is more than a coming-of-age story; it is a raw, heart-wrenching exploration of what happens when the sanctuary of home becomes a battlefield. Ruby, the youngest of five children, has spent her life in the shadow of a mother whose own untreated traumas have left a wake of neglect and fractured bonds. For Ruby, the world is a place of secrets and silence, where the sting of childhood trauma and the void of an absent father are masked by the numbing haze of alcohol.

Convinced she is unloved and unworthy of a different life, Ruby survives by remaining invisible. But the universe has other plans. When she meets a doctor whose love is as genuine as it is terrifying, Ruby is forced to confront a mirror she has avoided for years. He sees the woman behind the addiction, but Ruby only sees the "broken girl" from a home she’s desperate to forget.

As she battles low self-esteem and the crushing weight of her insecurities, Ruby is fueled by one singular, flickering flame of hope: her big sister. Years ago, her sister’s father snatched her from the front yard, an act of kidnapping that was actually an act of salvation. Now, Ruby is on a quest to find the one person who truly knew her before the world broke her.

In this moving debut novel, Selena Gatlin crafts a story of survival that asks the ultimate question: Can we ever truly be loved for who we are if we are still running from who we were? Ruby is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the long, winding road toward finding home, not in a place, but within oneself.