Ruth Bell Graham is known as the wife of evangelist Billy Graham. It was Ruth who influenced Billy, as his most trusted life-partner. In Ruth, a Portrait, we meet this fascinating and remarkable woman. Brimming with anecdotes, this is a breathtaking journey, with stops at many of this century's epoch-making events.
The childhood years of the future Mrs. Billy Graham were spent light-years away--in the China of the 1920s and 1930s. The daughter of medical missionaries, she and her family were caught in a crucible of unspeakable hardship; in addition to pestilence and plague, there was the unstable political and military turmoil surrounding the Nationalist government, the Communists, and the Japanese invaders. These hazardous realities shaped Ruth Bell and her family, a family inured to difficulties, but buoyed up by their deep belief in God's abiding will.
Virtually raised by the Grahams, the author is a repository of Ruth Bell Graham's stories and has seen firsthand the spirit of this courageous woman. Patricia Cornwell not only gives readers a full, rounded, and intimate portrait of Ruth Bell Graham, but also insight into the life of the Graham family and particularly Billy Graham.
A study of evangelist Billy Graham's wife from an old family friend?Edgar Award-winning author Cornwell. Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Patricia Cornwell was born on June 9, 1956, in Miami, Florida, and grew up in Montreat, North Carolina.
Following graduation from Davidson College in 1979, she began working at the Charlotte Observer, rapidly advancing from listing television programs to writing feature articles to covering the police beat. She won an investigative reporting award from the North Carolina Press Association for a series of articles on prostitution and crime in downtown Charlotte.
Her award-winning biography of Ruth Bell Graham, A Time for Remembering, was published in 1983. From 1984 to 1990, she worked as a technical writer and a computer analyst at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Richmond, Virginia.
Cornwell's first crime novel, Postmortem, was published by Scribner's in 1990. Initially rejected by seven major publishing houses, it became the first novel to win the Edgar, Creasey, Anthony, and Macavity Awards as well as the French Prix du Roman d'Aventure in a single year. In Postmortem, Cornwell introduced Dr. Kay Scarpetta as the intrepid Chief Medical Examiner of the Commonwealth of Virginia. In 1999, Dr. Scarpetta herself won the Sherlock Award for best detective created by an American author.
Following the success of her first novel, Cornwell has written a series of bestsellers featuring Kay Scarpetta, her detective sidekick Pete Marino and her brilliant and unpredictable niece, Lucy Farinelli, including: Body of Evidence (1991); All That Remains (1992); Cruel and Unusual (1993), which won Britain's prestigious Gold Dagger Award for the year's best crime novel; The Body Farm (1994); From Potter's Field (1995); Cause of Death (1996); Unnatural Exposure (1997); Point of Origin (1998); Black Notice (1999); The Last Precinct (2000); Blow Fly (2003); Trace (2004); Predator (2005); Book of the Dead (2007), which won the 2008 Galaxy British Book Awards' Books Direct Crime Thriller of the Year, making Cornwell the first American ever to win this award; Scarpetta (2008); The Scarpetta Factor (2009); and Port Mortuary (2010). In 2011 Cornwell was awarded the Medal of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters, one of France's most prestigious awards to honor those who have distinguished themselves in the domains of art or literature, or by their contribution to the development of culture in France and throughout the world.
In addition to the Scarpetta novels, she has written three best-selling books featuring Andy Brazil: Hornet's Nest (1996), Southern Cross (1998) and Isle of Dogs (2001); two cook books: Scarpetta's Winter Table (1998) and Food to Die For (2001); and a children's book: Life's Little Fable (1999). In 1997, Cornwell updated A Time for Remembering, which was reissued as Ruth, A Portrait: The Story of Ruth Bell Graham. Intrigued by Scotland Yard's John Grieve's observation that no one had ever tried to use modern forensic evidence to solve the murders committed by Jack the Ripper, Cornwell began her own investigation of the serial killer's crimes. In Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper--Case Closed (2002), she narrates her discovery of compelling evidence to indict the famous artist Walter Sickert as the Ripper.
In January 2006, the New York Times Magazine began a 15-week serialization of At Risk, featuring Massachusetts State Police investigator Win Garano and his boss, district attorney Monique Lamont. Its sequel, The Front, was serialized in the London Times in the spring of 2008. Both novellas were subsequently published as books and promptly optioned for adaptation by Lifetime Television Network, starring Daniel Sunjata and Andie MacDowell. The films made their debut in April 2010.
In April 2009, Fox acquired the film rights to the Scarpetta novels, featuring Angelina Jolie as Dr. Kay Scarpetta. Cornwell herself wrote and co-produced the movie ATF for ABC.
Often interviewed on national television as a forensic consultant, Cornwell is a founder of the Virginia Institute of Forensic Science and Medicine, a founding member of the National Forensic Academy, a member of the Advisory Board for the Forensic Sciences Training Program at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, NYC, and a member of the Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital's National Council, where she is an advocate for psychiatric research. She is also well known for her philanthropic contributions to animal rescue and criminal justice, as well as endowing college scholarships and promoting the cause of literacy on the national scene. Some of her projects include the establishment of an ICU at Cornell's Animal Hospital, the archaeological excavation of Jamestown and the scientific study of the Confederacy's submarine H.L. Hunley. Most recently, she donated a million dollars to Harvard's Fogg Museum to establish a chair in inorganic science.
Cornwell's books have been translated into 36 languages across more than 50 countries, and she is regarded as one of the major international best-selling authors. Her novels are praised for their meticulous research and an insistence on accuracy in every detail, especially in forensic medicine and police procedures. She is so committed to verisimilitude that, among other accomplishments, she became a helicopter pilot and a certified scuba diver, and qualified for a motorcycle license because she was writing about characters who were doing these things. "It is important to me to live in the world I write about," she often says. "If I want a character to do or know something, I want to do or know the same thing."
Visit the author's website at: www.patriciacornwell.com
This review is from: Ruth, A Portrait: The story of Ruth Bell Graham (Paperback)
Ruth Bell Graham was ailing this week and died yesterday. I had meant for the longest time to read this book, but just never got around to it. I guess I just thought she was perfect, and perhaps the book might be about that, but I was so moved by her life ending that I just had to know more about her. I knew I was going to miss her presence in our lives and country. Yesterday was the impetus to start reading the book. Fascinating. Far from being just about "churchy" stuff and a woman who was seemingly "pefect", author Patricia Cornwell (who as a little girl befriended Ruth's parents Dr. and Mrs. Bell first and later Ruth who was already married to Billy Graham) covers so much ground about these fascinating, wonderful, decent, giving, generous, sacrifical, funny, Godly people. Ruth was born and raised in China and her parents took over the hospital run by legendary American author Pearl Buck's parents! Author Cornwell does such a masterful job, I felt I was standing in China at that time, with all of the turmoil, the attacks of the Japanese, and spunky Ruth -- who was open-minded and truly loved and cared for all different kinds of people at an early age (when she and her sister would get into physical skirmishes, the family's Chinese help would actually place bets about which sister would win!). And the hand of God was on them too, protecting them from the bombings of the Japanese war planes, as their train sat enveloped in fog. Ruth didn't make perfect grades at Wheaton College, in fact she actually did very poorly in some subjects, but was a superb human being and very funny. Also covered was the Bell family history in colonial America, as well as the Graham family,and their ties to Thomas Jefferson, Princeton University, and even the fact that Ann Arbor, Michigan, is named after one of the "Ann's" in their family. Ruth's and Billy's courtship wasn't entirely smooth and perfect either, as they learned to discern whether they were meant to be together or not, and struggled with that decision, but finally conceding their deep love for each other. And of course the hand of God in their lives, and their deep love and concern and ministry for others. I laughed and cried and pondered life's deep answers this family sought from and were given by God and have given others. Powerful book. I am so grateful author Patricia Cornwell never gave up her dogged pursuit to write Ruth's biography. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
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This review is from: Ruth, A Portrait: The story of Ruth Bell Graham (Paperback)
An interesting story of a remarkable woman with unusual strength and deep insight into faith, Christ and christian living. Thus defenately worth reading. Yet the book left me spiritually hungry; I would have wanted to hear more Ruth's own voice, get closer to her and her way of figuring things out. That would have also brought more warmth into the biography. A book called "Coffee and conversation with Ruth Bell Graham and Gigi Tchividjian" fills that kind of needs better.
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This review is from: Ruth, A Portrait: The story of Ruth Bell Graham (Paperback)
This is a great book if you want to learn about Ruth's life from the perspect of a close family friend, someone who knew her well. It's easy to read and very interesting. However, as I read the book, it felt like there was an important aspect missing: the faith of Ruth Graham. The author, who I don't believe is a Christian hereself, does an excellent job describing Ruth as an incredible person, wife, mother, and friend; but I perceive from her writing that the author never realized the value or importance of Ruth's relationship with God. I read this book hoping to find encouragement and insight from Ruth's walk with God. However, I was disappointed in that area. Although very accurate and full of wonderful details about the life of this great woman, the author thoroughly glorifies Ruth as a person (with no real credit to her faith) so much so that by the end of the book I felt that Ruth was described as almost superhuman, someone to look at on a pedestal rather than try to relate to and learn from.
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