The Phoenix [Paperback]

Ruth Sims (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 2009

At fourteen, Kit St. Denys brought down his abusive father with a knife. At twenty-one his theatrical genius brought down the house. At thirty, his past and his forbidden love — nearly brought down the curtain for good.

This is a compelling Victorian saga of two men whose love for each other transcends time and distance and the society that considers it an abomination. Set in the last twenty years of the 19th century, The Phoenix is a multi-layered historical novel that illuminates poverty and child abuse, theatre history in America and England, betrayal, a crisis of conscience, violence and vengeance, and the treatment of insanity at a time when such treatment was in its infant stage. Most of all it is a tale of love on many levels, from carnal to devoted friendship to sacrifice.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The Phoenix is a magnificent tour de force, a novel of searing power and grace and constant surprises as it winds its way through London and New York, the slums, high society, fancy theaters, castles, madness, and the agony of one wounded heart seeking comfort and love in the arms of another man despite being without the sanction of society, church, God, or his own good sense. --Midwest Book Review

From the Publisher

Like Tess of the d'Urbervilles or Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, this Victorian novel is replete with plot twists, years-long detours, providential meetings, villainy, and a great deal of drama. It differs from most other Victorian novels in that the main characters who meet and fall in love are both men, one an adopted son with a dark secret and Dickensian background who has taken on a new identity, and the other an uptight doctor with a strong religious background.

Kit St. Denys, who began life as Jack Rourke, is an up-and-coming actor in London. He has gone from poverty and abuse at fourteen when he fatally stabs his abusive father, to riches when he is adopted by a man who introduces him to the world of the wealthy and the theatre.

Nick Stuart is a troubled man who becomes estranged from his strict, unforgiving father when he goes off to medical school. Although his father is also a doctor, he is unwilling to allow his son to step beyond the small village and turns his back on Nick when he leaves home.

Kit and Nick meet after one of Kit's critically acclaimed performances and, from there, they begin a troubled but madly-in-love relationship that takes many years to resolve. Nick's religious beliefs cause him the deepest pain in loving Kit: "He loved Kit in the way God meant him to love a woman. It was as simple and as soul-damning as that."

While this problem should have been enough to doom their relationship, Kit has demons of his own, never able to shake the nightmares of his father's abuse, nor of the night he left him for dead. And yet Kit and Nick persevere through numerous reversals of fortune, years of estrangement, entanglements, and madness in a snake pit even Joan Crawford would find disheartening.

The author fulfills the implied promise to bring all the subplots together in a logical and satisfying resolution at the end of the novel. The main characters and supporting cast are fully developed and believable, and like any good Victorian novel, the villain is one who can be booed and hissed off stage, without being melodramatic. This is Sims's debut novel, but her imagination and delight in creative wordplay will take her satisfied readers everywhere they want to go. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 372 pages
• Publisher: Lethe Press; New edition (February 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590210468
• ISBN-13: 978-1590210468
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (59 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,976,859 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ruth Sims has lived her entire life in small town Mid-America, surrounded by corn-, wheat-, and soybean fields. Like Emily Dickinson she has never seen a Moor and has never seen the Sea (except, unlike Dickinson, in films) but she's seen plenty of silos, Amish buggies, whitetails, and amber waves of grain. She's the wife of one and mother of two ... or vice versa. She gets a little confused by the rush of living.

Though many years past schooldays, her education is continuous and far-ranging, with interests running the gamut from Shakespeare to awful puns and limericks; from criminal psychology to the science of baking towering chocolate cakes and artisan bread. Her special love of theatre (as reader and observer only; never a performer) is apparent in The Phoenix. Her passion for Classical and Romantic music comes to life in Counterpoint: Dylan's Story, published by Dreamspinner Press, July 2010. The Phoenix, originally published in 2004, was revised and republished by Lethe Press in 2009. There were a number of changes, so she urges potential buyers to get the one from Lethe Press.

She has always loved short stories, especially Jack London's. Though best known as a novelist, she is proud to have several short stories published. Like her interests, the stories range wide, from poignant literary works to comedy and sly mystery.

Words, imagination, books, music and writing have always been the means by which she could travel the world and slip into other lives. After retiring as a librarian, she was able to turn to full-time writing and set loose the characters who have been living in her head all this time. They are relieved. It was getting crowded in there.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Midwest Book Review: January 2007 Issue, January 2, 2007

By 

Lori L. Lake "Author of Like Lovers Do, Buyer... (Portland, Oregon, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Phoenix (Paperback)

Jack Rourke and his twin brother Michael are raised by an unloving prostitute mother and an abusive sailor father in the squalor of the late nineteenth century London slums. When Jack's brother dies at age thirteen, Jack violently escapes his old man's clutches and runs away.

Nick Stuart grows up on a farm with a religious fundamentalist father and helpless mother. Raised to follow in his father's footsteps and become the country doctor/vet, Nick rebels, flees his repressive father, and enrolls at university in London to receive an education.

Both young men try hard to escape the limitations of their youth. With the help of a theater owner, Lizbet Porter, and an adoptive father, Xavier St. Denys, Jack tries to shed the horror and grief of his frightful past. He reinvents himself as Kit St. Denys and becomes an actor and owner of a repertory company. Meanwhile, Nick starts his own medical practice and is committed to helping the downtrodden and poor receive medical care.

These two men might never have met one another, except that Nick and some friends attend a performance of "Hamlet," and Nick is spellbound by the starring actor, Kit St. Denys. He goes back to see the play repeatedly. Eventually, by chance, the two men meet, and it's love and lust and compelling attraction all at first sight.

But the story is hardly begun before complications develop in the most delicious ways. Kit has hidden so much of his past, even from himself, and Nick has trouble reconciling religion, family expectations, and the overwhelming compulsion he feels for Kit. There are plot twists and unexpected turns, and just when you think you understand what will happen next, Sims upends expectations with a deft and gleeful hand.

At one point, Kit gives Nick a book of sonnets in which he inscribes the following:

Without the sanction of Society,
Without the sanction of the Church,
Without the sanction of God,
I love you.

Though the men seem destined for one another, it seems that the world, London society, the theater, whole continents, and even Kit and Nick themselves conspire to keep the two apart. How can these two talented but haunted men possibly create a life together?

THE PHOENIX is a magnificent tour de force, a novel of searing power and grace and constant surprises as it winds its way through London and New York, the slums, high society, fancy theaters, castles, madness, and the agony of one wounded heart seeking comfort and love in the arms of another man despite being without the sanction of society, church, God, or his own good sense.

Ruth Sims has created an intensely fascinating world, Dickensian in breadth and compelling in its depth and the methods she uses to bring it to life. It's become commonplace for reviewers to toss off comment like "unputdownable," but in the case of THE PHOENEX, this is absolutely true. I haven't ready anything since Sarah Waters' work for evoking such an amazing and lush Victorian feel. Though the book is classified "historical," it's wildly evocative and dramatic without being melodramatic. The characters and themes will have you thinking about this book long after you've finished it. From the beginning to the end, the reader has no sure idea where the story will go, and while we fervently hope that Nick and Kit are, indeed, destined for love and happiness, the road they travel to invent and reinvent themselves is rocky, unpredictable, and utterly engrossing.

THE PHOENIX is fantastic writing and storytelling of the highest order. This is one book not to be missed. I give it my highest recommendation. ~Lori L. Lake, author of the "Gun" Series, Different Dress, Ricochet in Time, Snow Moon Rising, Stepping Out: Short Stories, and editor of Romance for LIFE! and the Lambda Literary Award anthology finalist, The Milk of Human Kindness.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars First novels should not be this good, January 29, 2007

By 

Rick R. Reed "Author of IM and Orientation" (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Phoenix (Paperback)

I have to admit, I wasn't prepared to love this book as much as I did. Rarely does a book make me cry, but this one did. It's difficult to believe this is a first novel, because Ruth Sim's highly competent and polished storytelling seems to be honed from years of hard-won experience. Her decades- and continents-spanning story of two people in love (and no, it doesn't really matter that they are the same gender; love is love as Sims' story more than competently proves) is an intriguing (and often mesmerizing) blend of historical fact, pathos, comedy, and heart. Sims creates characters that are not just stock protagonists for her sweeping romantic story, but real individuals we come to know and love. This is the kind of book that you're sorry to see come to an end. Highly recommended.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ruth Sims has written a book., January 13, 2005

By 

Michael J. Halfhill (Hockessin, Delaware) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Phoenix (Paperback)

THE PHOENIX
By Ruth Sims
Paperback: 343 pages
Publisher: Writers' Collective (September 1, 2004)
ISBN: 1932133402
$16.95 US
$22.95 Canada
Available at Amazon.com B&N
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Ruth Sims has written a book. I read a sample of Ruth's work elsewhere. That's why I drove into Philadelphia to buy it; $18.14, tax included. I put the book by my reading chair. I eyed the book for several days. I looked at the rich cover and admired the details featured on each beginning chapter page. I studied Ruth's photograph on the back. Her confident smile teased me.
"You know something I don't," I murmured to her.
Fifty pages into THE PHOENIX, I found out what. Ruth Sims is a consummate artist.
Now I know traditional reviews are replete with paragraphs full of character descriptions and plot analysis. I'm not a traditional reviewer. I'm not a reviewer at all. I'm a writer and so there will be none of that here.
What I want to tell you about is a talent. A talent that takes you, the reader, by the hand and says, "Come, walk, run, eat, sleep, bathe, laugh, cry, be brave and fearful, succeed, fail, mature and make love in a time and place you've only glimpsed in grainy films and stiff photographs. The story opens in the London of 1882 and closes as Le Belle Epoch tumbles into the age of automation.
The remarkable thing, for me at least, is the economy of words Sims uses.
I will offer only one example. Kit, the hero of the story, is in the home of a New York judge. "...Here the statues and pictures were no different than one would see in any grand home on the Avenue. Such neutered and strangulating respectability."
Such neutered and strangulating respectability; with just five words you know that the nude statues and paintings in the judge's library have been altered. Fig leaves and added drapery cover the subjects; no genitals are seen, no hint of sexuality-all in five words. Time and again Ruth Sims tells you what is, by telling you what is not.
Don't get me wrong. There are 343 pages in THE PHOENIX. Ruth Sims is not stingy in her storytelling.
Want a book you'll urge others to read? Then run, do not walk, and get a copy of THE PHOENIX.
Oh by the way, the most important word to remember in this little report is talent-there is no substitute!

Michael Halfhill
Author of BOUGHT AND PAID FOR
www.michalehalfhill.com