"The woman's faded Army coat, which partially covered her long skirt, had seen better days. A mass of silver hair bushed out wildly from beneath a red knit hat that had something on it that twinkled in the sunlight. On the lady's feet, dirty tennis shoes were riddled with holes, exposing thin green socks beneath. The approach of a mangy crippled dog caught the girl's attention as it slowly limped into her line of vision. It was pitifully hobbling on three legs toward the seated woman."

When antiques dealer Sadie Brennan, fresh from the break up of a long-term relationship, is called to her sister's estate outside Chicago, she has no idea she's being pulled into a major mystery. She is there to help her 8-year-old niece Savannah, who has entered into a trauma-induced state of muteness. But once she arrives in town, Sadie meets a strange homeless woman named Ruby, and her life truly becomes an odyssey. Together, Sadie and Savannah seek to solve the puzzle that is Ruby.

In Ruby, her first work of fiction in more than a decade, Mary Summer Rain delivers a merry adventure of metaphysical awakening, led by an old woman whose identity and purpose is unclear, but who just may be something much more than she appears . . . and more than you've ever imagined.