["Ruby" is] an intensely committed novel talking directly to teenagers, black, white, particularly those who are uncertain and scared of what their loneliness may involve them in. This is a very sensitive novel in which adolescent homosexuality is viewed as nothing so frightening, but perhaps just a way-step towards maturity. Ruby is desperately unhappy, unfairly labeled as an "Uncle Tom" in her school. She becomes drawn to Daphne, a strong, dramatic black girl, who, we will learn, has her own secret fears and family problems. Ruby's father is a lost, lonely widower. Her younger sister is spunky, a reader finding release in books. If Rosa Guy had taken a camera and put it down in 1970 (the year of her novel) on a completely believable black middle class family situation in any big city in America, she could not have achieved a more riveting picture of basically decent people...