This book was fine. The writing was good but the book just wasn't for me. While I had never read a book set in the 1950s south that was about white Christian people being shitty to groups other than Black people, I kind of kept forgetting that that's what the book was supposed to be focused on. Ruth was so good at pretending that was wasn't Jewish that I kept forgetting she was, whoops. The first 80% of the book felt like it was mostly just her running around looking at pretty dresses with her new friends and trying to impress her boring white bread boyfriend and disappointing her mother and nothing much was really happening. I would have much rather read about her mother as a teen leaving this world and discovering what life is like outside of debutante balls and sweet tea and falling in love with a Jewish man who probably challenged her world view pretty severely when she met him.

I did really like the last ~20%, but there was so little time left in the book after The Big Event that I didn't feel satisfied. I would have liked The Big Event to happen earlier and to have the chance to see more of how it influenced Ruth's life choices.

I would read this author again, because like I said the writing was good, but, to dip into my profession's lingo, I would classify the book itself as "an additional purchase".