MATADORA
Matadora is set in 1930's Spain and Mexico, and centres on a girl named Luna Caballero Garcia. Luna is orphaned young and a servant of the famed Garcia family. She is determined to become a bullfighter, despite her lowly station in life and the fact that women are prohibited from graduating to the status of matador-do-toros. She burns for the ring, and is willing to bend or break any rule to enter it.
Fortunately, Luna finds unlikely patrons in her master’s sons. Manuel, an aspiring poet and socialist, sees in his surrogate sister the genius he wishes he was; Pedro sees a chance to make an astonishing amount of money. The trio decides to travel abroad where Luna will have the opportunity to prove her skill, but she knows her true destiny lies in the blood-soaked sands of home.
Matadora is a powerful, compelling exploration of love and ambition. The pain that drives our ambition, the yearning for love it reveals, the lengths we go to win love, and the price we pay along the way. Matadora is about someone like you, trying against all odds, to win love.
SMOKE
In the 1950s, in the Ontario tobacco-growing community of Smoke, a young boy on the verge of manhood is scarred forever. A night out with his buddies, too much booze and a lit cigarette, and Buster McFiddie's life will never be the same. Through the process of healing, one man's voice speaks to him, softly, to ease his pain, spinning yarns of The Purple Gang, the notorious Detroit mob. It is the voice of John Gray, the town doctor, and soon it's clear that telling these tales means as much to Doc as hearing them means to Buster.
In an era of conformity, a disfigured boy tries to move his life forward, and an old man grapples desperately with his past: the convergence of two lives on the cusp will change each of them, and the small-town world that binds them, in ways they could not have imagined.
Elizabeth Ruth's second novel is a tour de force: a potent, richly inventive story of identity and transformation, of reconciliation between the way you are seen, and the truth of who you really are.
TEN GOOD SECONDS OF SILENCE
This debut novel introduces an astonishing new voice to the Canadian literary scene. With fresh, inspiring language, and characters who steal your heart, Elizabeth Ruth weaves together an unforgettable story of loss and landscape of memory.