7. Ruby Landry Dumas Tate Andreas

AKA: La Ruby, Giselle

Featured In: The Landry Series by V.C. Andrews

Biography: Ruby was born in the bayou town of Houma, Louisiana. Her mother, Gabrielle, died in childbirth and Ruby was raised by her Grandmere Catherine, a well respected Cajun traiteur (healer). Many secrets swirled around Ruby's birth including the identity of her father and the reason Grandmere Catherine threw Ruby's Grandmere Jack out of the house on the night of her birth. Ruby grows to be a teenager, loving her life in the bayou despite its difficulties. Her two greatest pleasures are painting (she's very talented) and her budding relationship with Paul Tate, the son of the wealthy local businessman. Her world is soon changed dramatically by two revelations. First, she finds out from Grandmere Catherine that Paul is her half-brother. He was born as a result of her mother's rape by his father Octavious and then adopted by he and his wife Gladys. The second, which comes a few months later, is that Ruby's father was not a stranger who passed through town as she had always been told. He was, in fact, a wealthy Creole business man named Pierre Dumas. He fell in love with her mother on a hunting trip and they carried on a long-term affair. Grandpere Jack arranged for the sale of the baby to its father as he had with Paul. When Grandmere realized Gabrielle was having twins she surrendered one and then knocked Grandpere Jack out with a cast iron frying pan to prevent him from taking Ruby. After he awoke, she threw him out. Revealing this final secret, weakens Grandmere Catherine and she dies a few weeks later after making Ruby promise to seek her father in New Orleans. Ruby is pushed into doing so after Grandpere Jack attempts to sell her to one of his low-life friends as a wife. She arrives in New Orleans during Mardi Gras and meets her father, his wife Daphne, and her sister Giselle. Pierre welcomes her with open arms but Giselle and Daphne scheme to make her live miserable. She also meets Beau Andreas,Giselle's boyfriend. The two become romantically and physically involved which culminates in Ruby doing a nude portrait of him. After Giselle is crippled in a car accident, Daphne finds the painting and attempts to have Ruby secretly committed to a mental institution. Ruby escapes and her father decides to send both girls to Greenwood, a girls-only boarding school in Baton Rouge, to get them away from Daphne. Ruby fits in and makes friends with Abby (a girl hiding the fact that she is part black), Miss Stevens (her art teacher), and Louis (a blind man who is a member of the school's founding family). Giselle hates the school and attempts to make Ruby miserable enough to leave. Tragedy strikes again when Pierre dies a few weeks before the holidays. Giselle (who has secretly re-taught herself to walk) then attempts her final scheme to get them out of Greenwood by framing Ruby for sleeping with the school's handyman when it was actually Giselle who did so. Ruby's expulsion is prevented by Miss Stevens and Louis. Giselle retaliates by having Miss Stevens dismissed for improper conduct with her students. During the spring semester, Ruby discovers she is pregnant with Beau's child and narrowly avoids a forced back-alley abortion. She runs back to the bayou and gives birth to Pearl. Everyone is convinced Pearl is Paul's daughter. Nearly a year later she agrees to marry Paul, now a rich oil man, for security with the understanding that they can't live like husband and wife. Beau (who was whisked off to school in France by his parents after they found out Ruby was pregnant) marries Giselle, but rekindles his relationship with Ruby whom he truly loves. In a bizarre turn Giselle contracts a deadly disease and Beau convinces Ruby to take her place. Paul reluctantly agrees, brings the comatose Giselle back to Houma, and tells everyone she is Ruby. Giselle dies and a distraught Paul drowns in the swamp, prompting his mother (to whom he has told everything) to get revenge by sueing for custody of Pearl. She loses, Ruby reestablishes her identity, marries Beau, becomes a famous artist, and later gives birth to twin sons, Pierre and Jean. Jean later dies of a snakebite just after Pearl graduates from high school. Ruby temporarily leaves her family to finally bury some of the demons of her past and returns just in time to help Pierre recover from a coma brought on by the trauma of losing his brother.

Why She is On the List: To be honest this one falls securely under the heading of guilty pleasure. V.C. Andrews (or more precisely the ghostwriter writing under her name) writes pure schlok, but it is engaging schlok nonetheless. Ruby is a favorite character because I honestly just couldn't wait to see what peril she was going to have thrown at her next. I've lost and rebought the books three times and I reread them every couple years. I even read them while on a family vacation to New Orleans when I was sixteen. She captivated me so much I forced my mom and Nancy to drive me through the entire Garden District until I found a mansion that exactly fit the description of the Dumas mansion so I could take a picture. I've read most of Andrew's work but no other character of hers ever excited my imagination quite like Ruby does. She is definitely the literary equivalent to crack.

Quotes: (These quotes are from Ruby, Pearl in the Mist, and All That Glitters)

"If there is a heaven or a hell, I thought, it's right here on earth. We don't have to die to enter one or the other."

"Don't you want to read it first?" Mrs Ironwood asked.
"What for?" I said. "This is all a well rehearsed play, with the outcome predetermined."
"Then why continue it?" she demanded quickly.
Yes I wondered why continue it? Then I thought about Grandmere Catherine and about all the times she was called to face the hardest of challenges, the unknown, the dark; and how she always went willingly to do battle for what was right and what was good, no matter how terrible the odds against her success were.
"I will continue it so that all those who are part of this conspiracy can face me and have me lay heavy on their consciences," I replied.
Mrs. Randle's eyes widened with surprise and a little appreciation, appreciation she was sure Mrs. Ironwood did not see.

"I was just thinking of how small we are under the stars."

"Nina Jackson used to tell me there were far more devils and that was why we needed all the powders and the chants, the bones and good luck charms. Even Grandmere Catherine gazed into the darkness with the belief that evil lurked in every shadow and she had to be vigilant and prepared to do battle. Was that my fate too...to always do battle?"

Fascinating Fact: Ruby had recurring dreams about her baby months before she actually became pregnant.