“…like a salmon swimming upstream. In her blood to go there. An irresistible pull. Only she didn’t swim away in the first place. That’s why it was so hard to know the way back. She was a little salmon scooped up in a big net.”
Lisa Bird-Wilson’s Probably Ruby (Coteau Books(Canada), 2020 & Hogarth (US) 2022) is a beaded mosaic of intertwined stories that span from 1950 – 2018; the thread has frayed and the beads threaten to spill forth. Ruby Valentine, born to a white teenager and her Métis (French & Cree) boyfriend and adopted by Alice and Mel, an older white couple with a relationship on the rocks even before the adoption, is at the heart of the collection; the stories whimper and wail with her struggles to find belonging, meaning, and family.
From forced Indigenous adoptions to the horrors of the Indigenous residential schools, the collection is as colorful, broken and loud as Ruby. It’s a chaotic, far from linear read full of laughter that fills a room and dripping with grief for stolen moments, memories and lives.
Read this book.
A Girl Named Tommi 