Happy Endings: Way Down Deep by Ruth White

Ruth White, Newbery winner (for Belle Prater's Boy, 1996), has given us another "realistic fantasy" novel, Way Down Deep, set in mid-twentieth century Appalachia. Like a charming snow globe village, the quaint little town of Way Down, West Virginia, sits snugly in its own little sphere, a deep valley in the mountains, an almost self-contained world with wonderful quirky charcters--crotchety oldsters, a goat who loves the view from car tops, genial tradespeople, a reclusive spinster boardinghouse owner, and a mysterious orphan who appears one morning in 1944, proclaiming her name is "Woo-bee" and that she came to town by means of a "wide" on a "hossie."

Little "Ruby" is instantly taken in by Miss Arbutus Ward, sole survivor of Way Down's first family and proprietor of The Roost, Way Down's boardinghouse which for three generations has sheltered the town's unmarried and misfit citizens, along with occasional traveling salesmen. Given the surname "June" for the month of her sudden appearance on the town square, Ruby June and her little Radio Flyer wagon are a frequent and welcome sight about town as she helps Miss Arbutus with tasks around The Roost and runs errands for its colorful residents. Doted upon by the town residents, by her twelfth summer life for Ruby June seems nearly perfect as she looks forward to a joyful summer topped off by the annual Kids' Day carnival in August.

In the peaceful summer of 1954 author White gives this idyllic village snow globe vignette a vigorous shake, in the personage of Bob Reeder, a reluctant robber who, armed with a plastic toy gun, desperately tries to hold up the Way Down Bank. "You don't want to do this, do you?" suggests a sympathetic bank customer. "Robber Bob," as he is immediately named, confesses that he's "riding the crest of a slump," having lost his wife and job, with a bunch of homeless kids to care for. Way Down takes in the tearful little man, finding him a vacant house to move into and a job at the local grocery. When Ruby June meets up with Robber Bob's elder sons, Peter and Cedar Reeder and his elderly and senile father Bird, forces are set in motion which change everything for Ruby and give Way Down something to talk about for several generations yet to come.

It all starts when old Bird Reeder keeps telling everyone that Ruby is a missing child whom everyone in Yonder Mountain, Virginia, believed to have been eaten by a panther:

"Panther got 'er," Bird mumbled.

"Don't pay any attention to Bird," Peter said. "He rambles a lot. Has no idea what he's talking about."

"He's talking about panthers," Ruby said.

"That's right!" Bird said loudly. "There were panthers on the mountain."

"It's okay, Bird," Peter said. "There are no panthers here."

"Panthers ate her all up," Bird cried out, pulling at his silver hair in agitation.

Peter comforted the old man by patting him on the back. "Who, Bird? Who did the panthers eat up?"

"Her!" Bird hollered again, pointing at Ruby.

From Robber Bob's piecemeal memory, Ruby finds out that she indeed appeared in Way Down the morning after the red-haired toddler, surprisingly named Ruby Jolene Hurley, disappeared from a family on Yonder Mountain headed up by the Widow Combs. Suddenly Ruby understands that she indeed has a family, still living on Yonder Mountain and knows that she has to go there to meet her grandmother and cousins and find out who she really is and how she came to be set down in Way Down on that June morning.

Author Ruth White shakes up Ruby's view of who she is and in turn shakes up the lives of Miss Arbutus and of Ruby's withdrawn and loveless grandmother on the mountain. While she shows the events of Ruby's sudden appearance in Way Down through a glass darkly, the truth of family and the human needs for love and redemption shine brightly through this fable-like narrative. Reviewer Ilene Cooper of Booklist calls this mystery novel of magical realism "as tender as a breeze and as sharp as a tack." Just as the swirling snow settles down inside the globe to reveal a scene both the same and different, Ruby (and the book's readers) become part of a vast change in the characters' internal landscapes. Middle readers, just beginning to work out their own identities, will be drawn to and learn from Ruby's search for her real self and the truth behind her own personal story.