Ilie Ruby says she doesn’t remember much from her childhood, but most of the memories she has are from her family’s summers at Canandaigua Lake. Boating on the lake and hanging out on the dock. Hearing ghost stories from the neighbor with 13 cats. Going to native festivals at Ganondagan in nearby Victor. Walking with her sister to Robeson Country Store in Vine Valley for penny candy.
When the short-story author and painter wrote her first full-length novel, her vivid memories of the people, places and lore of the Canandaigua area — combined with research into Canandaigua lore and Seneca culture — served as inspiration for “The Language of Trees,” released earlier this month as a trade paperback from HarperCollins’ Avon imprint. It’s set mostly in the Canandaigua area, with places like Bare Hill and Squaw Island taking on important roles.
Ruby, who grew up in Brighton, will return to the region this weekend for two readings from the new novel. She’s scheduled to appear at 7 p.m. Saturday, July 31, at the Barnes and Noble in Pittsford Plaza; then on Sunday, Aug. 1, she’ll do a reading at 1:30 p.m. at Wood Library, 134 N. Main St., Canandaigua. The reading at Wood is a collaboration between Wood and the Bristol, Gorham and Naples libraries, billing themselves as “libraries around the lake.” Copies will be available for purchase and signing.
“The Language of Trees” is about several people coming to pivotal points in their lives, forcing them to deal with the wounds of the past — with each both in need of some kind of healing and proving to be integral in at least another character’s healing. To name a few: There’s Grant Shongo, the teacher who’s isolated himself in his family’s old lake home after his wife leaves him. Echo O’Connell, who’s never forgiven herself for leaving Grant when she was 17, out of feat. Leila Ellis, who blames the choices of her past for her family’s misfortunes, especially the canoeing accident that claimed her young son Luke’s life. Her daughter Melanie, who also blames herself for Luke’s death and channeled her shame and anger into addiction before meeting the man she loves.
In one eventful summer week, Echo returns to care for her dying stepfather Joseph — and is forced to deal with how she feels about Grant. Melanie goes missing, which most chalk up to a drug relapse, while those who know her best suspect foul play. Their neighbor Clarisse wrestles with whether to finally tell Joseph that she’s loved him for years. A number of revelations are made about characters’ lives, histories, even identities. And all this takes place amid an explosion of mayflies, a proliferation of strange white stones and the running of hybrid wolves — as if the natural world’s cycles were finding sympathetic echoes in the people’s lives.
That’s no accident: Ruby’s consciously writing in the “magical realism” form of the likes of Isabel Allende and Gabriel García Márquez, in which the realistic coincides with the mystical. And, in fact, most characters encounter what appears to be Luke’s spirit, who prompts them in direct and subtle ways to take steps toward their and others’ healing.
“It’s sort of like when I say it’s a constellation of love stories,” Ruby said Wednesday. “What magical realism is to me is blending the mythic with the everyday. You have this very evocative, soulful, natural world that is as much a character as the actual characters. For me as a writer — I’m also a painter — it enhances the texture for me.”
The main themes for Ruby? Healing, and second chances.
“If there’s one theme in the book, it’s that the characters fit together like the pieces of a puzzle — one cannot be healed without the others,” she said. “Each is going through their own healing process, and is integral in the healing of others. It’s very hard to heal by yourself. ... Also, people don’t stay tragic. There are second chances.
“... I’m very interested in the process of healing — physical healing, how people heal each other, how people look to the spiritual world for healing, the role of prayer — it’s very fascinating to me. You never want to say that ‘the meaning of the book is this’ — but I really wanted to show that there are second chances.”
The author returned to the area several times over the years she wrote what became “The Language of Trees,” to immerse herself in the atmosphere, to research lake issues — she credits lake watershed inspector George Barden as particularly helpful — to listen to local lore and to research Seneca folklore, particularly at Ganondagan State Historic Site. (Some of the characters are part Seneca, and the background is important in how they view the world.)
“I really wanted to do justice to the Senecas, without borrowing too much of their story,” she said. “I did want to get my facts right — and I wanted to make sure the things I was writing about were okay with them.”
Ruby is the daughter of Sheila Ruby of Cleveland, Ohio, and Raymond Ruby, president of Ruby-Gordon Furniture, founded by her grandfather Frank Ruby. “My favorite teacher who inspired me as a writer was Tony DeFusto at French Road Middle School,” she said. “If I could find him, I would give him a big thank you.”
In her early adulthood, she worked as a production coordinator on archaeology documentaries in Central America, which enhanced her interests in archaeology and anthropology. Over the years, she’s worked as a fifth-grade teacher in California, fiction editor for The Southern California Review and a Houghton Mifflin editor in educational publishing. She now lives in Boston with her husband and three children.
And in keeping with the sort of confluence of events seen in the novel, the book’s release came roughly at the same time as another pivotal event in Ruby’s life: the adoption of her three children from Ethiopia.
“It’s sort of like my whole philosophy of synchronicity and unexplained occurrences is happening in my own life,” she said. “I worked on the book for 10 years and didn’t want to start a family and have children until my book was published.” After it was written, she didn’t put much focus on the publishing process — and then, mere weeks after returning from Africa with her new family, “I got the call — ‘HarperCollins wants your book.’ I thought, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’
“If I was to write this, no one would believe me.”
