Recovering Ruth: A Biographer's Tale

Countless Americans patiently trace genealogies and histories through slowly crumbling archives and weathering marble, seeking answers to questions about the ones who preceded us. This is a story of the meaning of such a search to one searcher. As the book's title alludes, Recovering Ruth: A Biographer's Tale focuses on how recovering Ruth Edgerton Douglass' history affects her biographer, Robert Root. Parts of Ruth's journal are excerpted in Recovering Ruth, and those who are interested in reading her journal in its entirety can look to Time by Moments Steals Away: The 1848 Journal of Ruth Douglass, edited by Robert Root. Root's task, as the book begins, is seemingly simple and straightforward: edit the 1848 journal of Mrs. C. C. Douglass for publication. The Michigan library catalog attributes the authorship to Lydia Douglass, the clan matriarch who lived to be an octogenarian. However, Root soon discovers that the journal was actually penned by the first Mrs. C. C. Douglass, Ruth Edgerton Douglass. This discovery compels him to reconstruct the people and places of the mid-nineteenth century Michigan frontier, from the then-booming young city of Detroit to the remote Lake Superior outpost, Isle Royale. Although his search begins in libraries and archives, he soon journeys to the places where Ruth triumphed over fears common to us all: loneliness, hardships, and loss. In retracing her life's journey, Root travels from Detroit to Chicago to Lake Superior's Isle Royale. Root uses his carefully researched details to evoke the Michigan Ruth would have known. He describes their approach of Isle Royale thus: "At last the island begins to rise in the distance, a long thin line above the water that slowly thickens as we thump our way steadily across the waves" (109). His language not only shows the vastness of the Great Lake, but also the treachery and danger inherent in crossing the world's largest freshwater lake even for a modern traveler. Imagery such as this gives us insight into the courage and determination of settlers such as the Douglasses. During the course of his timely yet timeless search, Root comes to realize that he is in search of the meaning not only of Ruth's life, but of his own. As Root says, "Perhaps I needed to recover Ruth in order to keep from losing myself" (xvi). History is comprised of a series of chance meetings and fortunate accidents not readily apparent by perusing a family tree. Our lives would be immeasurably different if our great-grandparents had decided that it was, after all, too difficult to make their way by wagon train westward to Kansas, if our grandmother had stayed home rather than attended a dance, if our father's soulful brown eyes hadn't met our mother's at a crowded wedding. Root directly acknowledges those subconscious murmurs: "Genealogy identifies lines of descent, who begat whom, the aftermath of events; what it doesn't recount are the myriad alternatives barely missed, the intangibl

The author not only feels and understands the love of research, he writes of it with eloquence and charm. It reminds me of sections of Robert Penn Warren's ALL THE KING'S MEN, the quest to uncover the hidden truth. Or Byatt's POSSESSION. It is that good.This author understands history. This author understands style. There are literary references and refreshing asides. It is a marvelous book.My only regret is that I could not obtain it in hardcover--a luxurious gold gilted edition, say, with easy-to-read print, its own ribbon bookmark, and an annotated index. But it reads fine like it is. Highly recommended.