The Beautiful Ruined World

The novel, The Beautiful Ruined World, deals with themes of art, family, and resistance. It begins in the present time. Juliet Ruskin is working for a housing authority in Phoenix, is married, and has a young child. She's troubled by the lies she's told her husband, and in a bigger sense, by her past, which involves the commission of a crime she has covered over. She believes writing down what's happened will be a way to forgive herself. The story she tells is about the disintegration of her family, local intrigue surrounding a proposed landfill, and an education that leads to environmental activism. For Juliet, this begins when her California family moves with the two younger children to a ten-acre ranchette outside of Montrose, Colorado, population 8,000. The father has to find a better climate for his health. As is typical all over the West, the people who move to different places know little about their property or the local history of the region. Juliet, who's seventeen, is left behind at a California private school in Monterey. She's rebellious, however, and is soon expelled and has no place to go but to her parents' new house. The father was a chemist in California and, in Colorado, he builds himself a greenhouse to grow vegetables and to experiment with flowers. The mother played the bassoon, but in Montrose she tries out for a minor part in a local production of Chekhov's The Seagull, only to be cast as the star, the aging actress Arkadina. Juliet, when she arrives, refuses to go to school but soon realizes she can't do much without a car, so she makes concessions and attends school but also works in a restaurant. She secretly purchases a used car, which she hides from her parents in a neighbor's hay barn. The superficial plot centers around a proposed landfill not far from the family's house. At a hearing of the county commissioners, Juliet's father wonders who is profiting from the location of the landfill, and he's angry to be summarily silenc