RUBY (Landry Saga) [Hardcover]

V.C. Andrews (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 1994 | Series: Landry Saga

Ruby Landry finds her simple life in the Louisiana bayou changing when she meets and falls in love with Paul Tate, a man from the right side of the tracks. 25,000 first printing.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

One of the most popular authors of all time, V.C. Andrews has been a bestselling phenomenon since the publication of her spellbinding classic Flowers in the Attic. That blockbuster novel began her renowned Dollanganger family saga, which includes Petals on the Wind, If There Be Thorns, Seeds of Yesterday, and Garden of Shadows. Since then, readers have been captivated by more than fifty novels in V.C. Andrews' bestselling series. V.C. Andrews' novels have sold more than one hundred million copies and have been translated into sixteen foreign languages. --This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Prologue

During the first fifteen years of my life, my birth and the events surrounding it were a mystery; as much a mystery as the number of stars that shone in the night sky over the bayou or where the silvery catfish hid on days when Grandpere couldn't catch one to save his life. I knew my mother only from the stories Grandmere Catherine and Grandpere Jack told me and from the few faded sepia photographs of her that we had in pewter frames. It seemed that for as long as I could remember, I always felt remorseful when I stood at her grave and gazed at the simple tombstone that read:

Gabrielle Landry

Born May 1, 1927

Died October 27, 1947

for my birth date and the date of her death were one and the same. Everyday and every night, I carried in my secret heart the ache of guilt when my birthday came around, despite the great effort Grandmere went through to make it a happy day. I knew it was as hard for her to be joyful as it was for me.

But over and above my mother's sad, sad death when I was born, there were dark questions I could never ask, even if I knew how, because I'd be much too scared it would make my grandmother's face, usually so loving, take on that closed, hooded look I dreaded. Some days she sat silently in her rocker and stared at me for what seemed like hours. Whatever the answers were, the truth had torn my grandparents to pieces; it had sent Grandpere Jack into the swamp to live alone in his shack. And from that day forward, Grandmere Catherine could not think of him without great anger flashing from her eyes and sorrow burning in her heart.

The unknown lingered over our house in the bayou; it hung in the spiderwebs that turned the swamps into a jeweled world on moonlit nights; it was draped over the cypress trees like the Spanish moss that dangled over their branches. I heard it in the whispering warm summer breezes and in the water lapping against the clay. I even felt it in the piercing glance of the marsh hawk, whose yellow-circled eyes followed my every move.

I hid from the answers just as much as I longed to know them. Words that carried enough weight and power to keep two people apart who should love and cherish each other could only fill me with fear.

I would sit by my window and stare into the darkness of the swamp on a warm, spring night, letting the breeze that swept in over the swamps from the Gulf of Mexico cool my face; and I would listen to the owl.

But instead of his unearthly cry of "Who, Who, Who," I would hear him call "Why, Why, Why" and I would embrace myself more tightly to keep the trembling from reaching my pounding heart.

Chapter 1: Grandmere's Powers

A loud and desperate rapping on our screen door echoed through the house and drew both my and Grandmere Catherine's attention from our work. That night we were upstairs in the grenier, the loom room, weaving the cotton jaune into blankets we would sell at the stand in front of our house on weekends when the tourists came to the bayou. I held my breath. The knocking came again, louder and more frantic.

"Go down and see who's there, Ruby," Grandmere Catherine whispered loudly. "Quickly. And if it's your Grandpere Jack soaked in that swamp whiskey again, shut the door as fast as you can," she added, but something in the way her dark eyes widened said she knew this was someone else and something far more frightening and unpleasant.

A strong breeze had kicked up behind the thick layers of dark clouds that enclosed us like a shroud, hiding the quarter moon and stars in the April Louisiana sky. This year spring had been more like summer. The days and nights were so hot and humid I found mildew on my shoes in the morning. At noon the sun made the goldenrod glisten and drove the gnats and flies into a frenzy to find cool shade. On clear nights I could see where the swamp's Golden Lady spiders had come out to erect their giant nets for their nightly catch of beetles and mosquitos. We had stretched fabric over our windows that kept out the insects but let in whatever cool breeze came up from the Gulf.

I hurried down the stairs and through the narrow hallway that ran straight from the rear of the house to the front. The sight of Theresa Rodrigues's face with her nose against the screen stopped me in my tracks and turned my feet to lead. She looked as white as a water lily, her coffee black hair wild and her eyes full of terror.

"Where's your grandmere?" she cried frantically.

I called out to my grandmother and then stepped up to the door. Theresa was a short, stout girl three years older than I. At eighteen, she was the oldest of five children. I knew her mother was about to have another. "What's wrong, Theresa?" I asked, joining her on the galerie. "Is it your mother?"

Immediately, she burst into tears, her heavy bosom heaving and falling with the sobs, her face in her hands. I looked back into the house in time to see Grandmere Catherine come down the stairs, take one look at Theresa, and cross herself.

"Speak quickly, child," Grandmere Catherine demanded, rushing up to the door.

"My mama...gave birth...to a dead baby," Theresa wailed.

"Mon Dieu," Grandmere Catherine said, and crossed herself once more. "I felt it," she muttered, her eyes turned to me. I recalled the moments during our weaving when she had raised her gaze and had seemed to listen to the sounds of the night. The cry of a raccoon had sounded like the cry of a baby.

"My father sent me to fetch you," Theresa moaned through her tears. Grandmere Catherine nodded and squeezed Theresa's hand reassuringly.

"I'm coming right away."

"Thank you, Mrs. Landry. Thank you," Theresa said, and shot off the porch and into the night, leaving me confused and frightened. Grandmere Catherine was already gathering her things and filling a split-oak basket. Quickly, I went back inside.

"What does Mr. Rodrigues want, Grandmere? What can you do for them now?"

When Grandmere was summoned at night, it usually meant someone was very sick or in pain. No matter what it was, my stomach would tingle as if I had swallowed a dozen flies that buzzed around and around inside.

"Get the butane lantern," she ordered instead of answering. I hurried to do so. Unlike the frantic Theresa Rodrigues whose terror had lit her way through the darkness, we would need the lantern to go from the front porch and over the marsh grass to the inky black gravel highway. To Grandmere the overcast night sky carried an ominous meaning, especially tonight. As soon as we stepped out and she looked up, she shook her head and muttered, "Not a good sign."

Behind us and beside us, the swamp seemed to come alive with her dark words. Frogs croaked, night birds cawed, and gators slithered over the cool mud.

At fifteen I was already two inches taller than Grandmere Catherine who was barely five-feet-four in her moccasins. Diminutive in size, she was still the strongest woman I knew, for besides her wisdom and her grit, she carried the powers of a Traiteur, a treater; she was a spiritual healer, someone unafraid to do battle with evil, no matter how dark or insidious that evil was. Grandmere always seemed to have a solution, always seemed to reach back in her bag of cure-alls and rituals and manage to find the proper course of action. It was something unwritten, something handed down to her, and whatever was not handed down, she magically knew herself.

Grandmere was left-handed, which to all of us Cajuns meant she could have spiritual powers. But I thought her power came from her dark onyx eyes. She was never afraid of anything. Legend had it that one night in the swamp she had come face-to-face with the Grim Reaper himself and she'd stared down Death's gaze until he realized she was no one to tangle with just yet.

People in the bayou came to her to cure their warts and their rheumatism. She had her secret medicines for colds and coughs and was said even to know a way to prevent aging, although she never used it because it would be against the natural order of things. Nature was sacred to Grandmere Catherine. She extracted all of her remedies from the plants and herbs, the trees and animals that lived near or in the swamps.

"Why are we going to the Rodrigues house, Grandmere? Isn't it too late?"

"Couchernal," she muttered, and mumbled a prayer under her breath. The way she prayed made my spine tingle and, despite the humidity, gave me a chill. I clenched my teeth together as hard as I could, hoping they wouldn't chatter. I was determined to be as fearless as Grandmere, and most of the time I succeeded.

"I guess that you are old enough for me to tell you," she said so quietly I had to strain to hear. "A couchernal is an evil spirit that lurks about when an unbaptized baby dies. If we don't drive it away, it will haunt the family and bring them bad luck," she said. "They should have called me as soon as Mrs. Rodrigues started her birthing. Especially on a night like this," she added darkly.

In front of us, the glow of the butane lantern made the shadows dance and wiggle to what Grandpere Jack called "The Song of the Swamp," a song not only made up of animal sounds, but also the peculiar low whistle that sometimes emerged from the twisted limbs and dangling Spanish moss we Cajuns called Spanish Beard when a breeze traveled through. I tried to stay as close to Grandmere as I could without knocking into her and my feet were moving as quickly as they could to keep up. Grandmere was so ftxed on our destination, and on the astonishing task before us that she looked like she could walk through the pitch darkness.

In her split-oak basket, Grandmere carried a half-dozen small totems of the Virgin Mary, as well as a bottle of holy water and some assorted herbs and plants. The prayers and incantations she carried in her head.

"Grandmere," I began. I needed to hear the sound of my own voice. "Qu'est-ce -- "

"English," she corrected quickly. "Speak only in English." Grandmere always insisted we speak English, especially when we left the hous... --This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Atria (February 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671759353
• ISBN-13: 978-0671759353
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.9 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (86 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,927,843 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Another twisted and tormented Andrews family saga begins., March 7, 2001

By 

Chadwick H. Saxelid "Bookworm" (Concord, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ruby (Landry Saga) (Mass Market Paperback)

I enjoyed the first half of this premiere novel in the Landry Saga far more the second half. All the gothic touches chill the reader in all the right places (I especially enjoyed the voodoo trappings), but the Cajun characters of Ruby's home were far more interesting than the spoiled rich brats in the New Orleans section of the story; and the tortures that Ruby endures at the hands of Gisselle and her cronies are so cruel and inhumane it makes the book difficult to enjoy. Nonetheless, there is more than enough mystery and intrigue in this family's story to make me want to immediately jump into the next book in the series the moment I finish this one.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Readable, March 23, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Ruby (Landry Saga) (Mass Market Paperback)

I gave this book 3 stars because it did, in the end, achieve what it set out to do: it got me to buy the other books in the series. And it was an interesting read and a fast one. That being said, however, I think that this series more than any other (by V.C. Andrews) made me angry. I know that Andrews' characters are known for their...passivity, but Ruby really took it too far. She let everyone from her drunken, redneck grandpere to her to her whorish, jealous twin sister walk all over her. To tell you the truth, by the end of this first book, I was almost rooting for Giselle! At least she had a reason to act the way she did! She had been spoiled by her father, neglected by her adopted mother...she had to face the fact that her history wasn't what she had been told. She had to accept that she not only had a twin sister, but that the very same twin sister was moving into her house and usurping her place in her daddy's heart. And then? Then her sister stole her boyfriend! So...basically anything she wanted to do to Ruby was pretty much okay with me.

And speaking of the boyfriend...

Beau Andres was the most shallow, boorish, unlikable male lead I have ever come across. He dumped Giselle for Ruby, claiming to be oh so appreciative of her sweet virginity. Then at the first chance he gets he rapes her in her art studio! I don't care if she ended up enjoying the climax or not! She pleaded with him to stop about 50 times and he wouldn't! RAPE! And the fact that Ruby views this act not for the assault it is but for an indication of "love" is sickening. Their whole relationship was sickening...throughout this first book I kept hoping she'd run back to the swamps. I'd much rather have seen [having sex] with her brother than this lout. At least her brother treated her with some respect.

Still, in the end, the author did do a good enough job on the characters for me to get so angry with them...which I guess connotes good writing. Of a sort. My advice? Read it but take it with a grain of salt.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars First Book in the Landry Family Series, March 28, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Ruby (Landry Saga) (Mass Market Paperback)

In "Ruby," we go deeper into the South, into Cajun country (Houma, Louisiana), where 15-year-old Ruby Landry lives in poverty with her grandparents, Grandmere Catherine and Grandpere Jack, never knowing who her parents were (her mother's dead, and her father is unknown at the moment). This is also one of the few books where the reader is aware of the time period in which the book takes place--the early 1960s.

As is typical with every V. C. Andrews heroine, Ruby has tremendous artistic talent and is encouraged by her grandmother to pursue her dreams of becoming a successful painter. However, several life-altering secrets arise to detour her from doing so. For starters, Ruby finds out her boyfriend (Paul Tate) is really her half-brother. (Imagine that.) Yet that doesn't really bother either of them, because they still get hot and heavy. Forbidden fruit and all that, I guess.

Ruby's second surprise comes when she finds a photo of her father, Pierre Dumas, and discovers that she has a twin sister living with him somewhere in New Orleans. Shortly after Grandmere Catherine confesses all of this, she dies, leaving Ruby in the care of her despicable, alcoholic Grandpere Jack, which was an obvious mistake, because he tries to sell her just like he did with her other two illegitimate siblings. So, Ruby flees Houma and searches for her wealthy family in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, a terrifically authentic setting that horror writer Anne Rice uses quite often in her own books; and it works just fine for V. C. Andrews as well in this series.

It's always interesting when I shop for V. C. Andrews books, because either her books are tucked away in the romance section, or they're mislabeled as horror. I've even found them in the kids section, but those are usually the recent miniseries books. While "Flowers in the Attic," for one, could probably be considered horror, most of her books are just dramatic family sagas, aka general fiction. There's nothing remotely scary about these books. It's more psychological, involving lurid family secrets (like rape and incest, which are hardly romance-friendly topics); that's probably why these books are branded "gothic horror."

Anyway, "Ruby" pretty much follows the same paint-by-numbers storyline that has been haunting practically every latter-day series by V. C. Andrews. Yet this is still a captivating series, filled with Cajun-style superstitions and horrible family secrets. Following "Ruby" comes "Pearl in the Mist" (#2), "All That Glitters" (#3), "Hidden Jewel" (#4), and "Tarnished Gold" (#5).