Warm and sensuous, Lynn Pruett's whirlwind of a novel drops us into a small town during a blistering Alabama summer where Hattie Bohannon has just opened a truck stop. A magnet for transients of questionable background and inclination, and run by Hattie's nubile daughters, the truck stop is an uneasy presence in tradition-bound, gossipy Maridoches. Crackling with the energy and spark of strong, colorful characters whose lives are continually colliding, Ruby River is a poignant, uplifting story by a writer of extraordinary generosity of spirit and earthy wit. Hattie is quietly mourning her recently dead husband and trying to determine the contours of herself alone, but too often her strong-willed daughters—whose burgeoning sexuality is attracting attention from the truck-stop patrons—keep her at loose ends. In a season of unrelenting heat, desire gestates and hovers over Maridoches, threatening the moral equilibrium of the small church-town. Then Hattie's oldest daughter, Jessamine, is falsely accused of prostitution, and the reverend conveniently declares war against the immorality of the Bohannons and their establishment. What ensues is a clash of wills and values that will leave no one unaffected.

Lynn Pruett deftly weaves the struggles of Hattie, her daughters, and members of the community into a tapestry of individuals desperately trying to deny the conflicting urges of flesh and spirit, progress and tradition. In the manner of beloved contemporary writers such as Fannie Flagg and Rebecca Wells, Lynn Pruett's glorious tale—rich with the feel and flavor of the South—captures the struggle for the very soul of a community suddenly forced to look at itself in a new light.