Recovering Ruth: A Biographer's Tale

by Robert L. Root Jr.

The task of editing and annotating a nineteenth-century diary seemed straightforward at first, but as Robert Root assembled scattered fragments of lost history and immersed himself in background research, he became enmeshed in unexpected ways. When doubts arose about who really wrote the journal, Root found himself plunged into a mystery of lost identity, drawn ever deeper into the drama and complexity of forgotten lives and engaged in a quest at times both compulsive and quixotic. Part memoir, part meditation on the nature of biography, Recovering Ruth is the absorbing story of recovering a hidden past—and of learning firsthand the complications of intimacy that develop between a biographer and his subject.

191 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2003

Reviews

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book starts slow with lots of scholarship and fact that was hard for me to get into, but the second half picked up. In the second half, Root interweaves his own experience in the late 1990's on the Great Lakes with Ruth Douglass's journal account of 1848-1850 when she and her husband lived in the upper peninsula of Michigan and wintered over on Isle Royale. Root "recovers" Ruth because he is the first to determine that this journal was written by C. C. Douglass's first wife, Ruth Douglass, who died at age twenty-five, not his second wife, Lydia Douglass, who lived many years and had been previously assumed to be the author.
As Root's book progresses, the style becomes more artistic and Root sometimes changes tenses, uses wonderful sensory detail, even includes metaphors; the book works to a dramatic climax near the end when Root plays with the limits of time and writes "You who read this page (in the immediate present as you read it) may say, 'The search [for Ruth Douglass] is over, the published book is in my hand,' but I who write it now (in my immediate present but in the increasingly distant past for whoever reads it) am still uncertain what may change between this word-processed sentence and its preservation on the printed page" (175). Root was never able to locate an image of Ruth Douglass although according to the will of a relative, one existed. And the end of her one-year journal is almost all the documentation Root can find on her.

[Emily Carroll · Rating 3 out of 5]

Robert Root became engrossed with the history of a woman he knew nothing about, including her name, by a single journal found in a Michigan archives collection. He set out on a long and trying journey to uncover this woman’s lost identity and history by chasing down clues that linked a single phrase to an event or an unknown name to a new location. His commitment to revealing a lost history lead him to different locations and archives to research deeper the forgotten lives of the past and allowed him to create a personal bond with both himself and Ruth.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was an interesting story, but by the end it seemed to drag a bit.