“Ruby Dreams of Janis Joplin represents the latest achievement in Mary Clearman Blew’s distinguished career across several genres. . . . Ruby Dreams demonstrates that you can go home again and that home can lead to health. But the return is harrowing.”—O. Alan Weltzien, Western American Literature
“Mixing real time with past time, Blew reveals the underbelly of small-town life—secrets, betrayals, Satanic cults, and sexual abuse. But she also discovers grace and generosity driven by love, and how music may have the power both to heal and to connect. This is a stunning narrative told in vivid detail with the insights of someone who has been there. You will not be able to put it down.”—Annick Smith, writer, filmmaker, and coeditor of Wide Open: Prose, Poetry, and Photographs of the Prairie
“What makes the novel unforgettable is how Ruby Gervais rescues herself. . . . Only Mary Clearman Blew could have found the words, the songs, the friends, and the lost family that enable Ruby to survive and make a little dignity for herself along the way.”—David Huddle, author of The Story of a Million Years
“Ruby Dreams of Janis Joplin begins like a slow float down a river, and then somehow you find yourself in very big water, being driven along on dark currents of paranoia yet feeling yourself pulled toward something promising and generous and sweet.”—Kent Meyers, author of Twisted Tree
“Over decades and a sequence of empathetic, vivid, and compelling books, Mary Clearman Blew—one of our master artists—has shown Westerners enacting sometimes difficult truths about our societies and selves. Once again, she is to be thanked, and congratulated.”—William Kittredge, author of Hole in the Sky: A Memoir
