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| Plot Summary of Drowning Ruth |
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"In DROWNING RUTH, Ruth and her Aunt and guardian, Amanda, take turns in unravelling the mystery that surrounds Ruth's childhood -- what happened the tragic night that Ruth's mother (Amanda's sister) died, and why, in particular, Ruth insists that she remembers drowning. It is story which depicts vividly how history repeats and people fall apart when they try to lock their “skeletons in the closet”. "
Alison, Resident Scholar
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"Drowning Ruth is a novel written about the affects of keeping a deep, dark secret on the structure of a family and how this secret can cause lives to deteriorate and people to lose their minds. The novel takes place in 1919 in a small town at Lake Nagawaukee in Wisconsin, which is coincidentally where Christina Schwarz grew up. Amanda Starkey, a young nurse, found she was not emotionally invested enough to care for her patients properly and decided to come home to her sister, Mathilda Neumann and her 3 year old baby girl, Ruth because they had been left alone upon her husband, Carl's joining the military and going to war. Mattie is soon found drowned and frozen in the lake surrounding her fairy-tale house she had shared with her devastated family. Carl returns from the war to find his life as he had known it changed completely, with Amanda taking an overly protective, yet motherly role over Ruth and caring for him and his needs because he had been shot through his leg and made little effort to care for his grieving self.
It is revealed that Ruth's best friend, the lovely Imogene, was actually Amanda's daughter born without a father on the whimsical island house where Mattie had helped in her birth. Amanda discovered she couldn't keep the girl and took her to her friend who was incapable of having children to live an average life without knowledge of her mother or father. Carl began to believe that Clement Owens, Amanda's ex-lover who had fathered Imogene and left her for his husband, was the cause of his wife's death because he felt that she had cheated on him with the confident, wealthy man. The web of lies slowly unravel to reveal to Ruth that Imogene was in fact her cousin and that she had fallen in love with Arthur Owens, her half brother, leading Amanda and Ruth to construct a plan that separated the two and caused Imogene to flee because of her lost love. Amanda's love had settled too deeply for Ruth to leave her in the end and they shared their lives happily together.
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Danielle, Resident Scholar
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| Review Analysis of Drowning Ruth |
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Our unique search engine provides a wealth of detail about books by breaking them down into many different literary elements, all of which are searchable (click here).
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Ratings are on a 1-10 scale (Low to High)
Plot
Tone of book?
- thoughtful
Time/era of story
- 1930's-1950's
- 1900-1920's
Family, struggle with
Yes
Struggle with:
- Aunt
Family, loving relations
Yes
Special relationship with
- aunt
Internal struggle/realization?
Yes
Is this an adult or child's book?
- Adult or Young Adult Book
Pregnancy/Child rearing
Yes
Major part of story:
- giving up children
Coping with loss of loved one(s)
Yes
Loss of...
- mother
Main Character
Gender
- Female
Profession/status:
- student
Age:
- a kid
Is this an ordinary person caught up in events?
Yes
Ethnicity/Nationality
- White (American)
How sensitive is this character?
- sensitive to others' feelings
- middling sensitive to others' feelings
Sense of humor
- Strong but gentle sense of humor
Intelligence
- Smarter than most other characters
Physique
- average physique
Main Adversary
Identity:
- natural phenomena
- Female
Age:
- 40's-50's
Profession/status:
- doctor
Eccentric/Smart/Dumb:
Yes
Eccentric:
- obsessed
How sensitive is this character?
- sensitive to others' feelings
Sense of humor
- Cynical sense of humor
Intelligence
- Smarter than most other characters
Physique
- average physique
Setting
How much descriptions of surroundings?
- 3 ()
United States
Yes
Farm/Ranch?
Yes
Farm/Ranch:
- farm
- lot of descript of crop raising
- lot of descript of animal care
Style
Person
- rotating 1st
Accounts of torture and death?
- generic/vague references to death/punishment
- moderately detailed references to deaths
Sex in book?
Yes
What kind of sex:
- vague references
- impregnation/reproduction
- rape/molest (yeech!)
Unusual Style:
- a lot of flashback and forwards
- No single main character?
Amount of dialog
- significantly more descript than dialog
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Christina Schwarz Resident Scholar Profiles
TOP SCHOLAR:
 Danielle
SCHOLARS:
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Note: the views expressed here are only those of the reviewer(s). | |
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