The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Jiménez, Claire. What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez. Grand Central, 2023

Claire Jiménez’s first-person narrative, What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez follows the lives of the Ramirez women, Jessica, Nina, Dolores, and Ruthy. At the outset of the narrative, Nina reluctantly returned home after graduating from college. In the years since she graduated high school, she had avoided spending time with her family, afraid of seeing how grief had ravaged them after Ruthy’s disappearance. When Ruthy was thirteen years old, she went missing. The police did little to investigate the case and Dolores coped with the loss through stagnancy. Jessica had spent the intervening years taking care of their mother but when she had her own child, asked Nina to help. On Staten Island, Nina found a job at the mall, selling undergarments at Mariposa’s. Jessica worked at the hospital and Dolores taught Proper Parenting classes at the church.

One evening, Jessica called Nina, insisting that she turn on the television to a program called Catfight. On the screen, Nina saw a woman who looked like their missing sister, only ten years older. Initially, she did not want to believe that the woman on the show, Ruby, could be Ruthy. Jessica made her sister promise not to tell Dolores what she found. Later, Jessica and Nina continued to watch episodes of the reality TV show, in which the women, who acted like stereotypes of themselves, fought and argued. They found Ruby’s audition tape on the internet and Nina was struck by her poverty. Meanwhile, Dolores felt frustrated that her daughters did not respect her. At Proper Parenting class, she sympathized with Yesenia, who was struggling to balance raising her teenage son with the judgement of teachers and the school, and pressure from her employer. However, when Yesenia lashed out at Dolores and suggested she was an unfit mother because Ruthy disappeared, Dolores hit her on the back. The following day, Pastor Richie informed her that she was no longer employed at the church. Shortly after, Dolores discovered the Catfight video on Nina’s computer and called a family meeting.

In her third floor walkup, Dolores accused her daughters of lying to her and berated them for being ungrateful when they asked Irene to leave. As they argued, Jessica angrily told her family about the abuse she suffered as a child, for the first time. Dolores did not want to believe her but Nina remembered being in the house when it happened; she had been too young to understand. On Black Friday, Jessica, Nina, Dolores, and Irene drove to Boston where the Catfight contestants were performing at a nightclub. In the car, Jessica and Nina bickered about the radio which escalated into an argument about who loved Ruthy more. In Boston, Dolores and Irene pushed their way to the front of the club line and convinced the bouncer to let them in. When the sisters finally entered, the Catfight contestants began their dance performance. Another contestant stopped performing the choreography and began physically assaulting Ruby. The Ramirez women jumped on stage, ready to protect Ruthy. However, when the security team pulled them apart, Jessica, Nina, and Dolores saw that Ruby no longer had a beauty mark on her face; she was not Ruthy. In the car ride back to Staten Island, Nina turns the radio to Jessica’s favorite station. During the following weeks, they watched the reruns of Catfight together.