Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A Southern Girl, a Small Town, and the Secret of a Good Life
    Unavailable
    The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A Southern Girl, a Small Town, and the Secret of a Good Life
    Unavailable
    The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A Southern Girl, a Small Town, and the Secret of a Good Life
    Audiobook8 hours

    The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A Southern Girl, a Small Town, and the Secret of a Good Life

    Published by Hachette Audio

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    THE LITTLE WAY OF RUTHIE LEMING follows Rod Dreher, a Philadelphia journalist, back to his hometown of St. Francisville, Louisiana (pop. 1,700) in the wake of his younger sister Ruthie's death. When she was diagnosed at age 40 with a virulent form of cancer in 2010, Dreher was moved by the way the community he had left behind rallied around his dying sister, a schoolteacher. He was also struck by the grace and courage with which his sister dealt with the disease that eventually took her life. In Louisiana for Ruthie's funeral in the fall of 2011, Dreher began to wonder whether the ordinary life Ruthie led in their country town was in fact a path of hidden grandeur, even spiritual greatness, concealed within the modest life of a mother and teacher. In order to explore this revelation, Dreher and his wife decided to leave Philadelphia, move home to help with family responsibilities and have their three children grow up amidst the rituals that had defined his family for five generations-Mardi Gras, L.S.U. football games, and deer hunting.
    As David Brooks poignantly described Dreher's journey homeward in a recent New York Times column, Dreher and his wife Julie "decided to accept the limitations of small-town life in exchange for the privilege of being part of a community."
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHachette Audio
    Release dateApr 9, 2013
    ISBN9781619691797
    Unavailable
    The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A Southern Girl, a Small Town, and the Secret of a Good Life

    Related to The Little Way of Ruthie Leming

    Related audiobooks

    Relationships For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Rod Dreher Comes Home

      Apr 28, 2022

      THE AMERICAN WRITER ROD DREHER is an unfamiliar figure in Britain, where his diagnoses of the problems ‘“liquid modernity” presents for moral living are incomprehensibly alien to most Tories. Conservative electoral success, allied to the natural Blai

      9 min read

    • Article

      Heart Of Darkness

      Nov 2, 2022

      Heart Of Darkness
      8 min read

    • Article

      Heart Of Darkness

      Nov 2, 2022

      Heart Of Darkness
      8 min read

    • Article

      House Of Horrors Revisited

      Apr 16, 2024

      It’s been 30 years since police started digging up bodies in Fred and Rose West’s ‘House of Horrors’ – three decades since their horrific crimes were laid bare and shocked the nation. The first remains were discovered buried beneath a patio in the b

      4 min read

    • Article

      The stories 2020 FORGOT

      Dec 22, 2020

      The stories 2020 FORGOT
      3 min read

    • Article

      Fortean Follow-ups

      Feb 25, 2021

      Fortean Follow-ups
      5 min read

    • Article

      Doomsday Deaths

      Nov 2, 2023

      Doomsday Deaths
      5 min read

    • Article

      Culture Club

      Aug 19, 2018

      This book looks at the ramifications behind that age-old question: If you could invite anyone to dinner, living or dead, who would it be? Sabrina’s fictional list becomes a reality when she arrives at her 30th birthday dinner to find her best friend,

      1 min read

    • Article

      TRAPPED IN A CULT FOR 27 YEARS ‘I’m finally free’

      May 26, 2021

      A woman’s wedding day is supposed to be one of the happiest days of her life. For Briell Decker, it was a day filled with sheer terror. The 18-year-old was dressed in a virginal white wedding dress and looked every bit the blushing bride on the day o

      3 min read

    • Article

      Death And Doom

      Aug 11, 2023

      ON A rainy day in November 2019 a grandmother calls the police, desperately worried about her seven-year-old grandson. Neither he nor his 16-year-old sister have been seen in weeks and she can’t get any answers out of the kids’ mom or her husband. Th

      4 min read

    • Article

      Families of Choice Are Remaking America

      Aug 1, 2019

      When Dan Scheffey turned 50, he threw himself a party. About 100 people packed into his Manhattan apartment, which occupies the third floor of a brick townhouse in the island’s vibrant East Village. His parents, siblings, and an in-law were there, an

      9 min read

    • Article

      Families of Choice Are Remaking America: Through their networks of friends, singles are strengthening society’s social bonds.

      Mar 3, 2016

      When Dan Scheffey turned 50, he threw himself a party. About 100 people packed into his Manhattan apartment, which occupies the third floor of a brick townhouse in the island’s vibrant East Village. His parents, siblings, and an in-law were there, an

      9 min read

    • Article

      Deadly Connection

      Jan 21, 2021

      To her neighbours in Hawaii, Lori Vallow seemed like the perfect wife and mother. Outgoing and friendly, she moved in late 2014 with her then-husband, Charles, to the island of Kauai, where they started Juice Island, a beachside smoothie bar. While C

      4 min read

    • Article

      ‘He Took Everything Away’: Inside A Depraved And Devastating Sex Cult

      Feb 9, 2023

      In the fall of 2010, a group of sophomores at Sarah Lawrence College, a small liberal arts school 12 miles north of New York City, moved into a campus building called Slonim Woods 9. It was a laid-back college house – dirty kitchen, a lot of hanging

      6 min read

    • Article

      Stars Who Escaped Cults

      Nov 16, 2020

      Stars Who Escaped Cults
      3 min read

    • Article

      Modern Day Cults

      Jul 7, 2020

      Modern Day Cults
      4 min read

    Reviews for The Little Way of Ruthie Leming

    4/5

    43 ratings7 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      A story about our people and where we come from, told from the perspective of a brother who is different from his only sister. She loves the land and family and stays rooted there, giving of herself always -- even as she fights a deadly cancer. Her brother, who couldn't wait to get away and see the world, is a journalist. This is about coming home and learning who you are, or can be, and about things you didn't know or understand before. It's about belonging, family and community, and how much we all need that, even when we don't think so
    • 5/5
      This is a story about Ruthie Lemming, as told by her brother. It's a wonderful read, exploring the family ties of living in the south, moving away from those ties and the strengths (and weaknesses) of keeping those ties strong. The theme is centered around Ruthie's significant health issues and how the family (and community) rallies to support her. In short, it's a wonderful read. Park some kleenex next to you -- you'll need them, but -- wow -- Ruthie is a strong, vibrant character and the story drags you in (willingly!).
    • 3/5
      This is a book that causes us all to reflect upon the support systems we have or do not have in our lives. Are we so indiividualistic that we feel comfortable leading lives apart from any strong connections? Do we steer clear from group relationships or drop relationships when they become demanding of our time or emotional energy? But while engaging in a disconnected life, perhaps in the back of our minds we have a nagging worry, usually repressed, about what we will do in a time when we can no longer care for ourselves, particularly when we grow old. Mr. Dreher enlarges upon these issues when he tells the story of his life as he left a close knit family and community for writing jobs in Eastern urban centers. The mortal illness of his sister which brought forth an outpouring of love and aid from family and friends convinced him to return to this small Louisiana town from which he had fled as a young man. It means dealing with inevitable slights and hurts as people live in close relationship, but perhaps learning to forgive, to continue loving through it all, as the author found, will bring the peace and security he is seeking.
    • 4/5
      Rod Dreher writes very lovingly of his late sister, Ruthie Leming, in this memoir. Rod is the son who moved away from his small southern town and pursued writing, city life and all the excitements which go along with the fast-paced journalist lifestyle. Ruthie on the other hand, stayed behind, married and raised her family in her home town. Rod and Ruthie's personalities couldn't be more different, and they seemed to have chosen paths which corresponded to their values.
      Rod undergoes many changes as he matures and eventually returns to his home town to be with Ruthie during her illness and to create roots for his own family.
      Conflicts emerge quickly, and Rod describes them with grace, mercy and respect.

      I very much liked his writing, his honesty and humility.
      I'd like to check out his other writings now.
      Great book, highly recommend.
    • 3/5
      This is a nice read. It is a tribute from a brother to his sister who dies way too soon. It is also a story about small town life.
    • 4/5
      This is a well written and touching book about reconciliation and healing. For the writer and conservative writer Rod Dreher and his younger sister, Ruthie, their small Louisiana community defined them as he and she matured. It produced feelings of belonging to her as well as a compulsion to get out for him. Family and community meant everything to the small town people of Dreher's childhood, and they routinely congregated at Dreher’s parents’ homestead and later at Ruthie’s, but in his youth, he found himself at odds with his father and Ruthie. Dreher longed for experiences beyond what he saw as the imprisoning boundaries of their Southern community.Dreher communicates movingly of the conflicts within himself and within his family, in particular with his sister. He takes us on the journey as Ruthie becomes a teacher with a tremendous influence on her students, admired by everybody in town, but with little patience for what she beleived to be Rod’s pretentious and overly academic world view and lifestyle. Eventually a permanent distance and unspoken hostility developed between the brother and sister.Their chosen paths were significantly different. Whereas Ruthie married her high school boyfriend before finishing college and was happy to never go faraway from her hometown or parents farm, Dreher alternated employment and towns several times even after getting married to his wife and having children. It was not until Ruthie is diagnosed at 40 with cancer that Rod starts the process of re-evaluation. He takes a good hard look at his life and realizes that after over twenty years away from home he is just now ready to return, at peace with the choices he made as he begins the process of getting to know his family better and makes an effort to forgive and understand them. Through his sister’s way of life as well as in her dying, Dreher, discovers empathy, thankfulness and the ability to concentrate on the graces we each encounter everday.(less)
    • 4/5
      The tale of a soul-searching brother. Life in a small town is what you make of it. It can be a loving enlarged family or a soul-smothering existence. Sometimes you have to leave to find home.