PROBABLY RUBY

A bighearted portrait of an Indigenous woman whose transracial adoption spurs a lifelong quest to discover—or perhaps create—her identity.

Born in the 1970s to a White, unmarried teenage mother and a Métis/Cree father, Ruby is placed in foster care and eventually adopted by a White couple who “couldn’t afford to be too choosy” about the baby’s Indigenous heritage. Ruby’s adoptive father, a seldom-employed alcoholic, leaves the family when Ruby is an adolescent. Ruby remains unhappily with her mother, Alice, who makes her wear a huge hat because her skin "instantly browned up in the sun" and who won’t help her daughter research her Indigenous roots. Deprived of both her own history and real affection as she comes of age, Ruby grasps for satisfaction where she can find it, often resorting to alcohol and sex with unworthy partners. The novel is composed of chapters dated by year and titled with the names of people who have shaped Ruby, including her adoptive and biological parents, boyfriends, and social workers. The random ordering of the vignettes—ranging from 1950 to 2018—can be confusing. Some chapters are told from Ruby's perspective and involve figures in her life, while others assume the points of view of family members Ruby never meets. The chapter about Ruby's pregnant birth mother is a heartbreaking account of what happens when women lack reproductive freedom, and the chapter that follows Ruby's grandfather convincingly renders the abuse he suffers as a student at one of Canada’s notorious residential schools for Indigenous children. Sometimes the fragmented narrative is unsatisfying: As soon as one character’s central trauma is revealed, the novel moves on to another, leaving little opportunity for development. Only Ruby is fully realized by the end. But readers may forgive clunky prose and spans of exposition for the chance to spend time with this complicated character with a big laugh and a guarded but vulnerable heart.

An unsparing exploration of the injustices wrought by misogyny and settler colonialism.