M. Ruth Little's memoir, The Book of Ruth, shows what happens when an artist and a historian inhabit the same life. The ghosts she tames are those she carries from her childhood and those she finds in the lost places of North Carolina. The artist examines those ghosts from all sides and uses her art to understand them. The historian sees old and forgotten houses, crab shacks, commercial, and farm buildings. The artist envisions the lives that once inhabited them, and the historian fights to preserve them so that we may all remember.

The Book of Ruth is an engaging recollection and reflection on the life of a girl born into a traditional Southern family, with traditional Southern complications. She then sought and found her own non-traditional path to and through adulthood. It is fortunate for the state of North Carolina that Ruth Little braided together her interests and those of her native state.