Ruby - Softcover

A lonely West Indian girl in Harlem is driven by grief over her mother's death and the neglect of her ambitious and domineering father to take refuge in the companionship and affection of a strong-willed young black woman

- Eighteen and desperately lonely,  she has adjusted from a life in the sun and blue  seas of the West Indies to the mean, crowded streets  of Harlem. Her mother is dead, and her father is  obsessed with the American passion to succeed. Ruby  makes the painful transition from girl to woman  when she meets the beautiful and bitter  Daphne.
Daphne Duprey -- She prides herself on always  being "cool, calm, collected, poised,  sophisticated, cultured, and refined." Ruby is drawn  to this girl,who, in Ruby's eyes, is everything  she is not. They fill the aching emptiness in each  other, love each other, despite the shared  knowledge that their happines will end as abruptly as it  began.