The Baker’s Tale: Ruby Spriggs and the Legacy of Charles Dickens

For his latest, Hauser (The Final Recollections of Charles Dickens) expands a Dickensian anecdote into the sweet, simple tale of Ruby Spriggs, an orphan who finds refuge and then love in mid-19th-century London. Though Dickens himself only appears in the copy of Oliver Twist that Ruby reads with her beloved, Edwin Chatfield, his influence is felt in this novel’s lofty, moralizing championship of the poor and downtrodden, and the unsparing description of the now-infamous working conditions in the English coal mines. While the caricatured villainy of Edwin’s employer Alexander Murd, who sends Ruby alone and broken-hearted to America, is as unlikely as the coincidence that eventually reunites the grieving lovers, the story endears through the generosity of the several benefactors who aid and support the central pair. These include the euphoniously named Octavius Joy, the American bookseller Abraham Hart, and the humble baker Antonio, who tells their story. Hauser’s spare prose, unadorned but for the scattered details that anchor the reader in a bygone age, delivers a tale true to its source of inspiration in the generous way it insists the good and pure-hearted will triumph over the wicked. (Dec.)