The only thing I didn’t love about Diamond Ruby by Joseph Wallace was finishing it, because then it was over and I had to leave her world. Lucky you, you can still look forward to it.
If you want the perfect book to give to a young, old, or in-between female this holiday, get Diamond Ruby. (And then you’re going to want to pass it on, so you may want to buy an extra. I’ve already gone through a few.)
I don’t want to give much away, but I’ll say this: Joseph Wallace’s inspiration for his book was Jackie Mitchell, who was signed (in 1931) to an all male-team in an all male baseball league in Tennessee. She struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. A few days later, the baseball commissioner banned her (and all women) from the league on the grounds that the sport was “too strenuous” for women.
Diamond Ruby begins in 1913 Brooklyn, when Ruby Thomas is seven, and then shoots us into 1920’s New York in a manner which, for me, captured the danger and wildness of that era in a way I’ve never experienced. Ruby’s story is half fairy-tale, and half knuckle-biting suspense (there were times towards