Ruby Fortune's life shines in 'Hardland'

With the main character’s name Ruby Fortune, the novel’s setting in the Arizona Territory at the turn into the 20th century and its title “Hardland,” the reader can guess this read is going to be quite a ride. And it is from the first page, when a woman who is more philosophical and self-assured than tough talking, introduces herself with the statement – not confession – that she killed her husband.

She is wounded from that deed as well. While she wonders if she will ever be forgiven, she understands she would do it again. All that is in the first two pages. Historical novelist Ashley Sweeney will take another 350 pages to share Ruby’s life with you. It is a tale and a journey that starts in the character’s teenage years in her father’s traveling wild west carnival in Texas. Picture a minor league Buffalo Bill.

Big Burl is the star of this show. More than her father, he is owner and ring master. He is one of a host of characters Sweeney populates Ruby’s life with. Alas. He is soon gone, dead from a heart attack. Death in the 19th century was all too common and unexpected, often happening too soon.

Pushing into the inhospitable west was always hard. Most of the novel takes place in Jericho, a small mining town south of Tucson, though it is not on maps.

Ruby has quite the struggle as her next 25 years spin out. Marrying Willie Fortune and having four sons was not fortunate but a battle with a wife-beating husband who controlled her through her addiction to laudanum, an opiate.

For her to realize her dreams and gain a healthy life – and to protect her children – she shoots Willie dead in their home. Through a forged deed and the local sheriff’s support, that leads to the purchase of a road house, which she renovates as the Jericho Inn.

Live is never easy or without conflict but also constantly present are Ruby’s friends. Divina, whom her dad depended on and who has moved back to Jericho, is a rock and the mother she never had. In Tucson there is Vi, owner of a brothel, the place where Ruby was likely born.

There is the Shakespeare quoting Wink, a help when he is not drunk. And there is Sheldon, the big hunk of a sheriff, and helpful in the most critical ways to Ruby. She ought to fall for and marry him, but Sweeney insists that Ruby have a complicated journey. She certainly does. The love of her life will be Percival George Washington, Jr., a dangerous choice in the Arizona Territory in 1900, one they will get him killed if their romance is found out.

Nature is a character, too. As in “Eliza Waite” and “Answer Creek,” her first two novels, the beauty and delicacy, sights and sounds of the natural environment are woven into the novel, whether Ruby is headed up to the silver mine or taking a walk in the desert with her son Sam.

The story ends a little too happily ever after, but not all the loose ends are tied up. Ruby does not get her man, or any man. She is at peace with the good and bad she has done, a complex life well lived in a hard land.

Sweeney will read from and sign her novel, 2-5 p.m. at Seaport Books in La Conner.