Emily Ruskovich's 6 favorite books
The best-selling author recommends works by Marilynne Robinson and Jesmyn Ward
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Emily Ruskovich is the author of the novel Idaho, a prize-winning 2017 best seller. Her new short-story collection, Nightjar, includes “Owl,” her O. Henry Award–winning tale about a fur trapper caring for his wife after she’s been shot in an encounter with four adolescent boys.
‘Housekeeping’ by Marilynne Robinson (1980)
The most foundational novel of my life. A flooded house, a derailed train, a lake haunted by tragedies both personal and mythic. This is the most beautiful depiction of childhood and sisterhood I’ve ever read. Buy it here.
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‘About, Above, Around’ by Mark Mayer (2025)
In this weird, gorgeous story collection, which is as funny as it is heartbreaking, Mayer has set out to illuminate the feeling, the life, inherent in the smallest increments of language. He succeeds brilliantly. I will never look at “after” or “by” or especially “near” the same way. Buy it here.
‘The Lost Journals of Sacajewea’ by Debra Magpie Earling (2023)
Earling gives a voice to the young girl Sacajewea, creating a shattering first-person account of her enslavement, her grief, and her endurance, re-centering her in a brutal history. The language of this novel is so alive, so singular and devastating, that I’ll never forget it. Buy it here.
‘Never Let Me Go’ by Kazuo Ishiguro (2005)
Kathy H. is the young narrator of this intensely haunting novel about love, art, childhood, friendship, grief, and the very definition of humanity. At the heart of this speculative novel is an unspeakable atrocity that serves as the premise of Kathy’s life. Yet it is a childhood love that guides the narrative to its brilliant end. Buy it here.
‘Salvage the Bones’ by Jesmyn Ward (2011)
Esch is 15 years old, motherless, poor, living in rural Mississippi. Twelve days before Hurricane Katrina strikes, she is throwing up from morning sickness and watching her big brother fret over his beloved pit bull’s newborn pups, which are dying one by one. The story is a moving and raw depiction of a lasting familial love. Buy it here.
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‘What the Ice Gets’ by Melinda Mueller (2000)
A Homeric retelling of Ernest Shackleton’s attempt to reach the South Pole. Mueller was a biology teacher from Seattle who found her own way into the incredible story of the Endurance. She wrote her book-length poem in response to her battle with cancer. When my husband gave me the book years ago, he said, “This book is to ice what Housekeeping is to water.” Buy it here.