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A Novel
by Kate Riley
Book Reviewed by:In this mesmerizing and profound novel, the arc of a woman's life in a devout, insular community challenges our deepest assumptions about what infuses life with meaning.
Ruth is raised in a snow globe of Christian communism, a world without private property, television, or tolerance for idle questions. Every morning she braids her hair and wears the same costume, sings the same breakfast song in a family room identical to every other family room in the community; every one of these moments is meant to be a prayer, but to Ruth they remain puzzles. Her life is seen in glimpses through childhood, marriage, and motherhood, as she tries to manage her own perilous curiosity in a community built on holy mystery. Is she happy? Might this in fact be happiness? Ruth immerses us in an experience that challenges our most fervent beliefs.
What are you reading this week? (8/28/2025)
Ruth by Kate Riley about a young girl growing up in a Hutterite community.
-Evonne_Benedict
As the book goes on and Ruth grows older, Ruth and the reader put together a fuller—although still constantly surprising—picture: the Dorf is a Hutterite colony in which "the Sermon on the Mount was their only charter, all goods were held in common, and a young person such as herself had no task other than discerning whether to accept Christ into her heart and seek baptism." This last part is difficult for Ruth—she loves Christ (she thinks), but she never feels or says the right thing. It's not that she feels like she doesn't belong at the Dorf, but rather that she's always failing to meet its standard. It was "relief from pride and curiosity that Ruth prayed for," Riley writes; the qualities that make her a great literary protagonist are of little use before God. Riley tells the story of Ruth's life in medium-length snippets, in which seemingly significant plot points (marriage, children) unfold matter-of-factly, without fanfare or tension, and mostly take a backseat to Ruth's internal struggles and questions...continued
Full Review
(967 words)
(Reviewed by Chloe Pfeiffer).
Jenny Offill, author of Weather and Dept. of Speculation
Irresistibly smart and funny. Joshua Cohen, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Netanyahus
The serenely weird testament of an unintentional heroine in an intentional community, and an act of novelistic grace that deserves not only cult status but its own goddamned religion. Nell Zink, author of Mislaid and Doxology
A detailed, delicate study of how character is formed by collision with so many sharp corners that they form a perfect circle – how we entrap ourselves in the choices of others, glimpsing freedom in flashes.
Kate Riley's novel Ruth takes place on a Hutterite commune in Michigan. Hutterites are a branch of the Anabaptist movement, a radical movement of the Protestant Reformation (other branches include the Amish and Mennonites). The primary tenets of the Anabaptists are adult baptism and the separation of church and state.
Hutterites were originally from Austria and South Germany; their community was founded in 1528 and named for its charismatic leader, Jakob Hutter, who was tortured and burned as a heretic in 1536. The group was persecuted and driven to other parts of Europe, as well as North America in the 1870s. Today, the population of Hutterites is about 50,000 and the sect mostly exists in small colonies (Bruderhöfe) of about ...
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