Diamant doesn’t do as smooth a job of transitioning at this point of the story, where we are about to learn something about the mysterious Black Ruth. A strange man appears on Easter’s doorstep seeking the Wharfs, and when she tells him they’re both dead, he heads off towards the old Wharf homestead. From upstairs in her room at Easter’s, Ruth sees him and for some reason decides to follow him. There is then a confrontation at an altar-like boulder and with a chisel at his neck, the stranger reveals the story of a young slave woman murdered there and a baby being brought to the Wharfs for care.
It’s all too convenient, particularly when Ruth realizes that she is that baby that was saved, and realizes at last who her mother was, and not only that, that this stranger’s father was the murderer–not the stranger himself, who legend had blamed.
It gets real close to infodump with Ruth’s background and reason for coming to Dogtown all revealed within this dramatic chance meeting (what if Ruth hadn’t noticed the stranger?) as well as a surprise for Ruth herself as to her real mother. We still don’t have an explanation for Ruth taking on the persona of a male, and that more than anything was the most intriguing part of her mystery. We are given some background as to her stonemason skills, and we do feel and understand her reticence at becoming any part of a community. Though not really.
It just wasn’t as skillfully done as Diamant has revealed the rest of the characters to us and perhaps a less contrived meeting and more gradual revelation of the character of Ruth would have been more to my expectations.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology