The Book of Ruth: A Memoir of Family

A heart-wrenching yet hopeful memoir of migration, motherhood, and Black womanhood from an NAACP Image Award-nominated writer who examines her Caribbean grandmother’s life to make sense of her own. As a child, Naomi Jackson never felt like she truly understood her grandmother, a stoic, stern but nonetheless loving woman. It wasn’t until Ruth’s old age and Naomi’s adulthood that the two began to see each other as friends. Ruth became a steady, grounding presence in her life—a source of strength who guided her granddaughter through some of life’s most difficult moments. In the wake of Ruth's passing, a grueling divorce, the death of her father, and navigating new parenthood during the height of the pandemic, Jackson felt herself once again longing for her grandmother. The Book of Ruth is Naomi Jackson’s way of continuing that dialogue beyond the boundaries of their lifetimes.