What Ruth Learned: A Novel

A novel of secrets, reinvention, and the stories we inherit

Ruth Sullivan never expected to return to Los Angeles. But when her life stalls out, she is pulled back into the city of her childhood — and into the mystery of her family’s past. What begins as a quest to remake her own life becomes a journey through forgotten journals, faded photographs, and the glittering shadows of 1950s Hollywood.

In a dual-timeline narrative that spans decades, Ruth uncovers the truth about a woman who once called herself C-Note, a priest with a past, and a marriage that unraveled under the weight of ambition and silence. As Ruth pieces together the fragments of lives she never knew, she must confront her own choices, her fractured family, and the legacy she is poised to carry forward.

What Ruth learns does change her life, but not in the way she first imagined.