Island Girl
Berkley Trade
Literature and Fiction: Women's Fiction
December 7, 2010
ISBN-10: 0425237249
ISBN-13: 9780425237243
Available in: Trade Size
There are people who try hard to forget their problems. All Ruby wants to do is remember...
Ruby Donaldson has been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s Disease, and she’ll be damned if she won’t straighten out her troubled family before she no longer knows how.
Ruby spent years fighting to hold on to the home her grandmother built on Ward’s Island. The only way she can ensure that her younger, mentally scarred daughter Grace can live there for the rest of her life is to convince her older daughter, Liz, to sober up and come home.
Ruby always thought she’d have a lifetime to make things right, but suddenly time is running out. She has to put her broken family back together quickly while searching for a way to deal with the inevitable—and do it with all the grit, stubbornness, and unstoppable determination that makes Ruby who she is...until she’s Ruby no longer.
Photo by Kelly Wilk, Kelly Wilk Photography
Lynda Simmons is a writer by day, college instructor by night and a late sleeper on weekends. She grew up in Toronto reading Greek mythology, bringing home stray cats and making up stories about bodies in the basement. From an early age, her family knew she would either end up as a writer or the old lady with a hundred cats. As luck would have it, she married a man with allergies so writing it was.
With two daughters to raise, Lynda and her husband moved into a lovely two storey mortgage in Burlington, a small city on the water just outside Toronto. While the girls are grown and gone, Lynda and her husband are still there. And yes, there is a cat — a beautiful, if spoiled, Birman. If you'd like to read the legend of Birman cats click here. If you'd like a link to allergy relief, click here.
When she's not writing or teaching, Lynda gives serious thought to using the treadmill in her basement. Fortunately, she's found that if she waits long enough, something urgent will pop up and save her — like a phone call or an e-mail or a whistling kettle. Or even that cat just looking for a little more attention!