Ashes in the Valley
Paul and Ruby Sue both come from different lives. Paul came from a mining family in the Rocky Mountains of Montana. He was told from an early age that he would never amount to anything, and a traumatic experience as a child left him mentally scarred for the rest of his life.
Ruby Sue never had the luxury of rebelling against a menial life. She grew up in trailer parks and cars across the Southwest, before finally settling into desperate poverty in the dense marshes of Northeast Texas. Fists, switches, TV remotes, cigarettes, backhands, hot coffee; you name it, she’s had it used as a weapon against her.
After both seeing their lives wasting away in front of them, they take the only escape route they can: the military. They meet on an Army base in Oklahoma, and from first sight, they see something in each other. She thought he could do great things, and he agreed. He would conquer the world, and she would help him do it, or so they thought, but drugs, mental illness, more money than they'd ever seen before and more problems with the law than either would ever imagine would put their dreams, love for each other and even their sanity to the ultimate test.
What happens when money can't buy happiness? What do you do when you can't even trust your own thoughts? Who do you turn to when you've compromised your integrity one time too many?
They escaped their old lives once before, but can anyone truly escape themselves?
(This was originally written in 2019, and was in the early stages of being published before covid changed the world and that all fell through. So, here it is for you all to hopefully enjoy. It was originally written as the first of three novels, but all of them will be added into one collection here.)
Shaneghai · Realistic
