Ruby

Ruby: The World War II Years is the edited journals of Ruby Side Thompson, set in east London and coverings the years from England's entry into that war in 1938 until V-E Day in 1945. Ruby, the editor's paternal grandmother was an addicted reader and writer and kept her journal for sixty years. Her journals are compelling to read because Ruby wrote with a personal candor and such a broad scope that we truly come to know her life and her times, her passions and her longings, her terrors and her resentments. She records smoldering under the yoke of "a woman's place" and soaring to the music of Strauss. She writes of despair in her search for spiritual meaning when the world around her seems devoted to destruction. In this volume of her journals we live with her during the terrors of the Nazi bombing raids in her own neighborhood as well as the ubiquitous deprivations and struggles of any civilian in a war zone. Ruby also exposes her deep grief with her mother's death and both her love and her hate for her husband. Because Ruby is so open her journal remains fresh and surprisingly universal. It reads as though it was just written.