Helpful Score: 2
I'm not sure what to rate this book. The writing style made me feel as if Ruthie was in the room speaking. However, it felt like an overheard conversation on the bus or maybe in a waiting room. I was not very interested but listened for lack of something else to do. I skipped throughout the book. The book is about how she is raised by a grandfather so abusive he killed his wife and how she overcomes and forms her own family.
Why hasnt Oprah made this into a movie yet??? I will be first in line at the theatre! You go Gal!!
This was an excellent read; besides being a page turner, each turn of event was told so dramatically! I like that!
This is true and hard to believe that things still go on even in 2006 with families hurting one another. No matter how narrow your path in life is that it will speak of your life.
A stunning and horrifying memoir. Not easily forgotten.
This is an excellent book about a young girl who just keeps bouncing back time after time through many years of neglect and abuse.
It is well written and easy to read. It puts you right in the middle of what is happening to her as she grows up.
A great book.
It is well written and easy to read. It puts you right in the middle of what is happening to her as she grows up.
A great book.
Ruthie Bolton was born January 6, 1961, in the Hungry Neck section of Charleston, South Carolina. At the time her mother was thirteen; she has never known who her father was. Her mother was the wandering kind, so Ruthie - nicknamed "Gal" by her step-grandfather - was raised in her grandparents' home. One day Grandmama died as a result of a severe beating by her husband - it occurred to no one to call this to the attention of the authorities - and Gal was left in the brutal hands of her granddaddy, who also beat her unmercifully. Ruthie began to steal things in school and developed a stutter; she drank and smoked dope. But she resolutely stuck with her education and graduated from high school, which was likely her salvation, for today Ruthie is happily married, with children and a fine job. At last, she is at peace - with herself, and even with the memory of her grandfather. It is nigh impossible to convey the astonishingly eloquent simplicity of Ruthie's witnessing to her time. Here is an absolutely remarkable document, as touching as it is painful, as ageless as it is timely.
