A Harsh and Private Beauty, is about the life and loves of Ruby Grace, now in her 89th year, on a train journey with her granddaughter back to Chicago, the city of her birth. When the book opens, Ruby is living in a retirement care home, but as a young woman, she was a jazz and blues singer, once trained for a career in opera. The novel traces Ruby's grandparent's immigration from Ireland to New York City, her father, Daniel Kenny's life in 1920s Chicago -- the era of gangsters, nightclubs, rum-running and Prohibition -- and Ruby's subsequent life in Montreal and Toronto. Headstrong and talented, Ruby struggled with the conventions of the times, was trapped in a marriage that forced her to give up her singing career, and in love with another man who shares her passion for music. Now, on the train headed back to a city she cannot remember, to a daughter she hardly knows, Ruby tries to look honestly at herself and the choices she has made, choices that affected not only her children, but her grandchildren. Ruby has a stroke on route, leaving the disconnected story of her life and love in the hands of her granddaughter, Lisa, who must reveal a secret to her father, Ruby's son, that her grandmother guarded all her life.--$cProvided by publisher.
Authors
- Control Number Identifier
- CaOOCEL
- Date published
- 2019.
- Description conventions
- rda
- Dewey Decimal Classification Number
- C813/.6
- Dewey Decimal Edition Number
- 23
- Distributor
- Canadian Electronic Library (Firm),
- General Note
- Issued as part of the desLibris books collection
- ISBN
- 1771336617 9781771336642
- LCCN
- PR9199.4.K4485
- LCCN Item number
- H377 2019eb
- Modifying agency
- BDX
- Original cataloging agency
- NLC
- Physical Description | Extent
- 1 electronic text (225 pages)
- Published in
- Ottawa, Ontario
- Publisher or Distributor Number
- CaOOCEL
- System Control Number
- (CaBNVSL)kck00240501 (OCoLC)1121277321 (CaOOCEL)457028
- System Details Note
- Mode of access: World Wide Web
- Transcribing agency
- YDX
