A Virtuous Woman (Oprah's Book Club) [Paperback]

Kaye Gibbons (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 5, 1997

When Blinking Jack Stokes met Ruby Pitt Woodrow, she was twenty and he was forty. She was the carefully raised daughter of Carolina gentry and he was a skinny tenant farmer who had never owned anything in his life. She was newly widowed after a disastrous marriage to a brutal drifter. He had never asked a woman to do more than help him hitch a mule. They didn't fall in love so much as they simply found each other and held on for dear life.

Kaye Gibbons's first novel, Ellen Foster, won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and the praise of writers from Walker Percy to Eudora Welty. In A Virtuous Woman, Gibbons transcends her early promise, creating a multilayered and indelibly convincing portrait of two seemingly ill-matched people who somehow miraculously make a marriage.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Oprah Book Club® Selection, October 1997: Gibbons's novel, A Virtuous Woman, takes place in the same hardscrabble part of the world as Ellen Foster. The virtuous woman is Ruby Pitt Woodrow, a woman who might have ended up like Ellen Foster's mother if fate, in the shape of Jack Stokes, hadn't crossed her path. The daughter of prosperous farmers, Ruby runs off with a migrant worker who treats her badly, then abandons her far from home. When she meets Jack, a man 20 years her senior, she's working as a cleaning woman in another prosperous farmer's house. Jack is a man women don't look at even once, let alone twice; Ruby is a woman who needs someone to take care of her. Out of this unlikely union grows a quiet kind of love that is no less powerful for being unstated.

Ellen Foster and A Virtuous Woman share more than just location and a few characters in common. Though each is a complete novel in and of itself, taken together the two books resonate one another: Ellen Foster and Ruby Pitt Woodrow are both damaged people who find the kind of love they need to heal. These multilayered novels are tough-minded and resolutely unsentimental, just like their protagonists. Yet like Ellen and Ruby, each contains a nut of sweetness at its core that takes the bitter edge off the hard lives and hard stories Kaye Gibbons has to tell.

From Publishers Weekly

In flashbacks, two richly cadenced Southern voices explore vastly different backgrounds, troubled histories and an unlikely but loving marriage. PW found this "a vivid, unsentimental, powerful novel."
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (November 5, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375703063
• ISBN-13: 978-0375703065
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.4 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (117 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #193,698 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

63 of 66 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The love a man has for his wife, January 24, 2002

By 

Barbara "Queen of her castle AND her home lib... (beautiful Charleston, SC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Virtuous Woman (Oprah's Book Club) (Paperback)

Here'a wonderful, basic story of heartfelt love. There was something about Ruby from the first day Jack saw her at the picnic table where all the migrant workers met before work. Ruby Pitt was a woman that bore her share of crosses.
This story follows Jack's love for his wife through their marriage, through Ruby's illness and beyond.
It's a sweet story that will pull at your heart strings and I have to say, it had me crying at one point til I couldn't see through the tears.
You will love Ruby and Jack. You'll want to take their hands and help them. And there are some characters that you just won't like at all! Some truely mean people.
This is a quick read and a very enjoyable, hard to put down book. I strongly recommend reading this book. It's just plain old fashioned love and tenderness between two good human beings and the struggles they endure.

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not what you might expect., August 16, 2000

By 

Katherine Neis - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Virtuous Woman (Oprah's Book Club) (Paperback)

The first book I read by Gibbons, Ellen Foster, was really impressive. So when i picked up The Virtuous Woman, I was naturally anticipating more of the same. The story centers around a man named Jack who, at 40, falls in love with and marries Ruby, only 20 and already widowed. According to the back of the book, the main focus is their intense love for each other. While the book was interesting to read and very easily finished in a few hours, I find that I am left with more information about the neighbors, the landlords, Ruby's first marriage, Jack's years of work... everything else except Ruby and Jack's life together. This seems odd considering Gibbons speaks through the couple individually from chapter-to-chapter. One would think I would have ample information about their life together yet I do not feel as if I do. I don't want to say it was a bad book because it kept my attention and I enjoyed the plot. It just seemed a bit bland. Also, Ruby never consults her parents about any of the important decisions in her life (decisions made at 18, 19 and 20) nor does she ever live independently. She just sort of makes decisions without thinking and then hopes for the best. So, although she has a big heart, I can't really respect her as a woman. All in all, I would say it is a good book that could use some polishing to make it a great book.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Read, April 11, 2005

By 

drebbles (Arlington, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: A Virtuous Woman (Oprah's Book Club) (Paperback)

Beautifully written, A Virtuous Women, is the quiet love story of Ruby Pitt Woodrow, daughter of a rich farmer, and Jack Stokes, a tenant farmer. At first they seem an unlikely match, Ruby, although 20 years younger than Jack, is already widowed, Jack, unattractive and unsuccessful, has never been married. But both have had tough lives. Ruby is alienated from her parents due to her brief marriage which was a disaster. She is working as a maid when she meets Jack. Jack has never had much, although his dream is to own a piece of land. Together they find, if not what they were looking for, a sense of completeness.

The book is written in first person narration with both Jack and Ruby narrating alternate chapters (except the last chapter which is written in the third person). This technique helps make both characters seem real. For me, personally, Jack was the character I most cared about, mostly because we know from the very beginning that Ruby dies and we see that Jack is lost without her.

This is one of those simple, quiet kind of books where there is little action or plot, just the story of two people who come to love and care for each other. Yet, it's the kind of story that will stay with you long after you've read it.