Ruby begins in the summer of 1965 as she takes us on a journey with the flamboyant and carefree Candace, her mother whose attempt at preventing Ruby the heartache of an unhappy marriage and unfulfilled dreams sends her spinning into her youth years with a future and a hope. Week-end outings to the theater, the beach, and expensive shopping trips opens the young girl to a life outside the abusive home. She sees that there is a world where life is good and dreams can come true. Unexpectedly the teenager finds herself alone. Her mantra, "Ruby dances in her dreams, Momma cooks and cleans and cleans. Daddy mustn't ever know, that Ruby loves her dancing so," becomes the catalyst that, along with her naivete, sends her to the streets of NY grasping for meaning and purpose to the tragedy of her mother's death. Thirty years later, through Ruby's daughter Abby, secrets that Ruby has kept buried for three decades begin to surface. Candace's hope for her daughter finally comes true once fate rises to meet her and forces the truth of her life in New York to surface. Ruby delves relentlessly into the vortex of shattered lives - and then - suddenly, beautifully, wondrously, it discovers hope. in the very darkness of a loathsome and frightening world there glimmers a profound and thorough declaration of individual redemption."