What are you reading now?

``I just finished reading Kaye Gibbons' A Virtuous Woman, which . . . is written in the dialect of the rural South. The voice alternates between Ruby and Jack, a married couple deeply -- and, to outsiders, surprisingly -- in love, as Ruby prepares for her death from lung cancer and Jack, afterwards, mourns and remembers her. As they each tell their stories, we're given not only compelling and convincing characters but also a beautiful and heartbreaking love.''

ILANA STANGER-ROSS, author of Sima's Undergarments for Women