Dec. 27—91-year-old Ashland author’s journey inspires local book publisher to release her own novel
A Southern Oregon author whose first novel came out after her 90th birthday refuses to let her late publishing start prevent her from finishing her story.
Ruth Wire’s second novel, “Saddle Shoes and Stardust,” is nearly ready for release just one year after she published her first novel, a coming-of-age story, titled “The Night Birds Still Sing,” last year at age 90.
The novel is the second in what Wire calls the “Phoebe Rising” series, novels loosely inspired by the author’s experiences growing up and living in Southern California. “Saddle Shoes and Stardust” describes the challenges of a high school-age Jewish girl growing up in Los Angeles after World War II, her upbringing and awakening, as well as her path to studying nursing in the 1950s.
At 91 years old — she’ll be 92 in May, Wire is quick to point out — one would assume two novels loosely inspired by her life and experiences would be enough; however, Wire says what’s printed is only the half of it.
“I’m writing number five,” said Wire, of Ashland. “I hope I live long enough.”
Hilary Jacobson of Medford, who owns Rosalind Press, has published Wire’s first two novels and plans to release Wire’s third and fourth installments — and possibly the fifth. Since 2013, Jacobson had been attending Wire’s writing group, HayWire Writers Workshop.
“I was listening to Ruth’s novels, and I just loved them,” Jacobson said.
Jacobson — already an accomplished nonfiction author who writes about alternative health — released her first novel this year, “Red Madder Root,” with help and inspiration from Wire.
Wire and Jacobson plan to discuss their passion projects together at a book-signing and author talk at 2 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 7, at the Gresham Room of Ashland library, 410 Siskiyou Blvd., Ashland.
Wire already has completed manuscripts for third and fourth installments exploring the character’s life in Mar Vista and Venice Beach, California — tentatively titled “Love Among the Grownups” and “Universe of Two” — as the character navigates societal changes and inspiration in counterculture movements in the 1960s and beyond, the trials of single motherhood — not to mention plenty of twists, turns, loves and losses.
Wire has developed the ideas behind these stories for years in the writers workshop she’s hosted since 1995.
Jacobson called Wire an “institution in the Ashland Writers Workshop scene,” but Wire said she found the inspiration to start her own writers group after a series of rejections.
“I was thrown out of two writers groups,” Wire said.
Her realistic writing projects would focus on women’s experiences, including menstruation.
“That was too much for the sewing circle that called themselves a writers group,” Wire recalled.
Jacobson has self-published three alternative health books over the past two decades focused on nutrition and natural remedies for lactating mothers, “Mother Food” in 2004, “Healing Breastfeeding Grief” in 2017 and “A Mother’s Garden of Galactagogues” in 2021. But working with Wire and the writing group helped inspire Jacobson to release her own ambitious writing project this year.
Jacobson’s historical fiction novel explores the roots of long-established fairy tales through different epochs, and it weaves in Jacobson’s expansive knowledge of women’s health and herbal remedies.
“Instead of evil sorceresses, you have mothers and daughters,” Jacobson said. “It’s kind of multilayered but very gently. It’s teaching our forgotten epochs.”
The book’s title, “Red Madder Root,” alludes to the plant that would have dyed Red Riding Hood’s cloak.
“The Red Madder Root was an abortifacient,” Jacobson said, adding the fact was something that would have been widely known at the time.
Jacobson has nursed the idea behind the book since the 2000s, when she was living in Switzerland. When she shopped the idea to publishers, however, she was encouraged to pursue her studies on the historical suppression of women’s medicine as another nonfiction book.
She shelved the manuscript until summer 2021, when dense wildfire smoke in Southern Oregon halted outdoor events, and COVID-19 lockdowns canceled indoor events.
“I felt desolate,” Jacobson recalled.
She found a refuge and reprieve from the smoke in nature, and inspiration from fresh eyes looking at the project she’d started all those years ago.
“I heard my voice from years and years before,” Jacobson remembered. “I just started to cry.”
For more information about Jacobson, see hilaryjacobson.com.
For more information about Wire, see ruthwire.com, and for more on books published by Rosalind Press, see rosalindpress.com.
Reach web editor Nick Morgan at 541-776-4471 or nmorgan@rosebudmedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MTwebeditor.