The Healing Years

The story of a woman in rural North Carolina who grows up in hard times, endures many sorrows, but persists to become a respected healer in her community. A woman of great wisdom and strength, who through her healing years she helps many people, and eventually discovers how to heal her own heart.



REVIEW:

?It immediately draws from me the adjective 'genuine.'

Ruby is a wonderful creation, maybe a mosaic of more than one

woman. She has ?the gift? all right ? not only for healing with

roots and herbs and wise counsel ? but also for patience and for

love and steady affection. Such upright characters are

hard to draw convincingly; they go against the grain

of our skepticism. But when you get them right,

they are strong. What you have here is strong,

a memoir-chronicle about a kind of community

and a way of life not so well known anymore.

The ?retreat? to yard and garden at the end

is a kind of saintly benediction.?

~ Fred Chappell, poet, novelist, teacher;

Poet Laureate of N.C. (1997-2002)