Books for Prep: Moon Lily: (a novel) (Western Literature Series)

Ruth Farley is a stubbornly independent, free-spirited woman who homesteaded a piece of land at Glory Springs, deep in a beautiful, remote canyon in the Southern California Mojave Desert. At the end of the 1930s she is still there, raising her two children and struggling to preserve her solitude. But the world is intruding. Her Indian friend Martha has been arrested for a murder she didn’t commit, and Ruth must join the Yuiatei tribe in trying to free her.

In this final volume of Susan Lang’s Ruth Farley trilogy, Ruth discovers the limits of her autonomy and struggles to make peace with her painful past. In the enchanted natural world of Glory Springs, her wise, half-feral children seek their own place in an increasingly complicated world, as do the Yuiatei, who are losing their ancient traditions and finding little to replace them.

As Ruth and the Yuiatei help Martha’s lawyer, Nicholas Ghosh, prepare her case, rumors of a coming European war and the establishment of a military training camp nearby disrupt the tranquility of Glory Springs. Against the incessant pounding of the army’s artillery practice and the hidden presence of a murderous deserter, Ruth confronts her growing attraction to two very different men and the frustrations caused by her crippled body and vanishing solitude.

As the story comes to a dramatic conclusion and the world descends into the madness of another war, Ruth finally understands that she is inextricably part of the human community and that her hard-won independence will not be sacrificed if she accepts and cherishes the bonds of love and friendship.

Moon Lily is rich in complex characters and vivid insights into the social and economic tensions of prewar Southern California. Ruth Farley is one of the most memorable characters in recent fiction, a perplexing, sometimes exasperating, and utterly sympathetic modern woman torn between her desire for freedom and her need for love, her determination to live life on her own terms and the pressures that society places on a single woman. In this trilogy of novels, Susan Lang has achieved her place among our best contemporary fiction writers.