Way Down Deep (review)

Ever since Ruby appeared from out of nowhere as a toddler in 1944 in the small town of Way Down Deep, West Virginia, she has been embraced by the town (a neighborly bunch of oddballs, not overly curious about Ruby's origin) as one of its own. When Ruby is twelve or thirteen, the townsfolk take in another lost soul, this time a would-be bank robber with a passel of kids and a senile father. In a moment of lucidity, the elderly father remembers Ruby as a little girl who was rumored to have been carried off by a panther from a house in the woods sixty miles away. Feeling the need to investigate, Ruby finds a mean, bitter old woman who proves to be her grandmother and who is happy to have Ruby back to wait on her hand and foot. White works her usual magic of creating an entire town that looks after one another and accepts the quirks in their fellow humans that they can't begin to understand. This time, however, she adds a bit of real magic, as the arrival of Ruby turns out to have been tinged with mystical physics, while her return to Way Down Deep is a result of the no less magical pull of a strong and abiding love. White's humor is wise and gentle, limned always with the sense that every oddity of character is the result of an unanswered grief leaking out sideways. Some of those griefs get resolved, some don't, but the characters will stay with readers long after the last page. Goats, children, readers, disappointed old men, and crotchety old women—all find a warm welcome in Way Down Deep.