Rubies from Burma
Rubies from Burma is about one young girl’s struggle to escape the shadow of her older sister and to become her own person.
It’s July, 1941, in a dusty Georgia farming town. Plucky Mae Lee Willis, almost eight, knows there’s more to life than her distracted parents tell her, and she's determined to find out. Her sixteen-year old sister Ava, beautiful and sultry, is eager to grab all that life has to offer, especially Dulany “Duke” Radford. The paratrooper son of a World War I flying ace, who made good Duke want to prove he’s not a privileged kid. He goes off to fight in Burma, spying and sabotaging behind enemy lines, even though Ava pleads with him to pull strings for a stateside job.
But when Duke comes home from the war wounded in body and spirit and marries Ava, he has no idea that Ava is hiding something from him… Rubies from Burma takes us from the chaos caused by the “frizzledy chicken” in a middle Georgia farmyard to an elderly gem trader’s hut in a steaming jungle village; from a young girl’s first fumbling with a young man to a mysterious old African-American woman’s fortunetelling with cards. This book explores the many sides of beauty, as well as true and lasting love. It is also a book that explores war: the sacrifices that families must make, both for their country-- and for each other.
About Anne Lovett (Atlanta, Georgia Author)
A native of Dublin, Georgia with deep Georgia roots, Anne Lovett began writing as a seventh-grader, but got sidetracked into the biomedical field. She graduated from Emory University and received a Ph.D. from Georgia Tech. After stints in teaching, business, and rearing a child with disabilities, she returned to writing, taking classes at Emory and studying with writers such as Kent Nelson and Rosemary Daniell.
Her short fiction has appeared in Aethlon: the Journal of Sports Literature, The Distillery, The Jewish Women’s Literary Annual, and Red Wheelbarrow. A memoir piece appeared in Woman’s World. She has also published essays, poetry, journalism, and book reviews, and is a contributing writer for The Grapevine Art & Soul Salon.
Rubies from Burma, her first novel, was named one of the best 100 Indie books of 2017 by Kirkus Reviews. Her second book, a quirky mystery-romance set on the Georgia coast, was a finalist for the prestigious Maggie Award of Excellence give by Georgia Romance Writers. Her third novel, a "romantic and lyrical" historical novel set in Georgia in 1924, won a gold medal in the Benjamin Franklin awards sponsored by the Independent Book Publishers Association. She lives in Atlanta with her model-railroader husband and stray mooching cat, Charlie Chaplin. Besides writing, her passions are historic preservation, nature, and health. She has a romantic comedy set to come out in 2020.
