{"product_id":"ruth-and-rosa-bookmark-three-pines-cozy-mystery-literary-gift-gamache","title":"Ruth and Rosa Bookmark | Three Pines Cozy Mystery Literary Gift | Gamache","description":"She loves fiercely and will absolutely deny it.\nFor every reader who met Ruth Zardo in Still Life and has never quite recovered.\nFor every reader who has laughed out loud at something Ruth said and then sat quietly for a moment because underneath the terrible thing was the truest thing and Louise Penny does this to you constantly and you keep coming back for more.\nFor every reader who has a complicated and deeply affectionate relationship with the most cantankerous woman in Three Pines and her duck.\nThis bookmark is for all of you. Ruth would tell you she does not care that you love her. She would be lying.\n\n✦ ABOUT THIS BOOKMARK\nA richly illustrated scene of Ruth Zardo's house at the edge of the Three Pines village green on a Quebec winter afternoon — the house that is slightly more austere than the others, slightly less decorated, slightly more honest in its refusal to be charming, which makes it the most honest house in Three Pines and therefore in some ways the most important.\nThe Quebec winter sky fills the upper portion of the scene in the deep blue-gray of an overcast afternoon — serious and cold and beautiful in its severity, the sky that has been above Three Pines for every crime and every revelation and every bottle of scotch Ruth has consumed while thinking about both. Snow is deep and quiet on the roof and on the branches of the surrounding trees. The three great pines are visible in the background — dark and heavy with snow, the village present as the community that Ruth belongs to and complains about with equal ferocity.\nRuth's house itself — slightly gray and slightly worn and entirely itself, the house of a woman who has no patience for unnecessary decoration but whose interior through the window glows with warm amber lamplight and is full of books, volumes on every surface in the particular disorder of a serious reader who has been collecting for seventy-plus years.\nOn the front step — a bottle of scotch. Left there by someone who knows Ruth and loves her and expresses that love in the only currency Ruth accepts. The scotch catches the winter light and glows amber against the snow, the warmest point in the entire outdoor scene.\nRosa is present near the front step — white and slightly imperious against the winter snow, regarding the scotch bottle with the particular expression of a creature who understands the gesture if not the liquid. Rosa's reflection in the thin ice of the frozen duck pond at the edge of the path — the duck and her reflection, the solitary and the companionable, which is the whole story of Ruth and Rosa in one image.\nA rocking chair on the porch — empty at this moment but worn smooth in the pattern of a person who has sat in the same chair for years thinking the same difficult thoughts about poetry and loss and the people she loves and will not tell she loves them.\nThrough the window the interior glows warm amber — an armchair pulled close to a small fire, a glass of scotch on the table with the level lowered to the degree that suggests this is not the first glass, an open book of poetry face-up because Ruth does not treat books carelessly regardless of what she says about everything else. A manuscript on the desk — the words that will outlast her and that she knows will outlast her and that she affects not to care about.\nThe amber light from Ruth's window falls across the snow in the lower portion of the scene — warm against the winter blue-white, the warmth of one person's life lived with complete commitment to telling the truth even when the truth is uncomfortable especially when the truth is uncomfortable.\nRosa is wearing her coat. Ruth will not be told she is sentimental about a duck.\n\n✦ BOOKMARK DETAILS\n— Size: 2.15 inches wide by 6.75 inches tall — Printed on premium card stock — Full color illustration front with matte finish — Arrives in a kraft envelope — Ready to use in your current Gamache novel the moment it arrives\n\n✦ PERFECT FOR\n— Every reader who considers Ruth Zardo one of the greatest characters in contemporary mystery fiction which she is \n— Louise Penny devotees who have read the series more than once and love Ruth more each time \n— Readers who laugh at Ruth's terrible things and then feel the warmth underneath them and know that is exactly what Louise Penny intended \n— Anyone who has ever put on a coat for a duck and told no one about it \n— The friend who introduced you to Three Pines and therefore changed your reading life \n— this bookmark paired with the main Three Pines bookmark is the perfect two-bookmark gift set for that person — Book clubs reading the Gamache series \n— Ruth generates some of the best book club conversations of any character in the series \n— Mystery readers who appreciate a character whose love is so fierce it has to come out as something else entirely \n— Gifts for the reader in your life who loves difficult women who are secretly the most loving people in the room \n— Birthdays and holidays for the Gamache reader who already has the series and needs this bookmark immediately \n— Treating yourself \n— Ruth would say she does not care whether you treat yourself \n— do it anyway\n\n✦ RUTH ZARDO — A BRIEF APPRECIATION\nRuth Zardo won the Governor General's Award for poetry. She drinks too much scotch. She says what no one else will say. She is the most consistently unpleasant person in Three Pines and the most reliably honest. She has loved the people of that village for decades and expressed approximately none of that love in any conventional way.\nShe is accompanied everywhere by Rosa the duck. Rosa is not a service animal. Rosa is not a pet in the conventional sense. Rosa is simply Rosa and Ruth is simply Ruth and together they constitute one of the great pairings in contemporary fiction — the terrible poet and her duck, the prickliest person in the village and the creature who follows her everywhere without being asked and without being thanked and without needing either.\nLouise Penny gave us Ruth and Rosa and we have never fully recovered and we are grateful.\n\n✦ ROSA — A FURTHER APPRECIATION\nRosa the duck is white. Rosa the duck is slightly imperious. Rosa the duck wears a coat in winter because Ruth puts it on her and Ruth will not be told she is sentimental about a duck.\nRosa's reflection in the frozen duck pond is in this bookmark. The duck and her reflection — the solitary and the companionable — which is the whole story of Ruth and Rosa and also the whole story of Ruth and Three Pines if you look at it correctly which Louise Penny always does.\n\n✦ THE SCOTCH ON THE STEP\nSomeone left a bottle of scotch on Ruth's front step. They did not knock. They did not stay. They left it there and walked away before Ruth could open the door and say something terrible to them for doing something kind.\nThis is how you love Ruth Zardo. You leave the scotch and you go.\nThe scotch is in this bookmark. It is catching the winter light. It is the warmest amber in the entire outdoor scene. Ruth has not acknowledged it yet but she will and she will drink it and she will think about who left it and she will not call them and she will love them for it entirely.\n\n✦ PAIRS BEAUTIFULLY WITH\nOur main Inspector Gamache Three Pines bookmark — the village bookmark and the Ruth and Rosa bookmark together make the perfect two-bookmark gift set for the Gamache devotee. The village and its most beloved impossible resident. The community and the person who stands at its edge and loves it from there. Both bookmarks together tell the whole story of Three Pines more completely than either one alone.\nSee our shop for the Inspector Gamache Three Pines bookmark and our complete literary collection.\n\n✦ SHIPPING\nShips within 3 to 5 business days. Arrives in a kraft envelope so your bookmark comes to you simply and beautifully — ready to use immediately. We did not leave scotch on your step. We considered it. We thought the bookmark was better. Ruth would disagree. She would be wrong. She would not admit it.\n\n✦ ABOUT OUR SHOP\nEvery bookmark in our shop is designed and produced professionally by us — made with care in our own studio and printed on premium materials we stand behind completely. We are a small passionate operation and we treat every order like it matters because it does.\nWe are committed to five star service on every single order — from the moment you click to the moment your bookmark arrives at your door flat and perfect and ready to live inside your favorite book. If anything is ever less than exactly right please reach out and we will make it right immediately. We respond to every message promptly and we mean it — real people, real responses, no automated runaround.\nThank you for supporting a small independent bookmark maker. It means everything to us and we do not take it for granted. We hope this bookmark finds exactly the right book and exactly the right reader.\nMichelle and Julie \nThe Luna and Loom 📚","brand":"The Luna and Loom","offers":[{"title":"One Bookmark","offer_id":49291092263156,"sku":"B26","price":4.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Set of Three","offer_id":49291092295924,"sku":null,"price":4.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0835\/4902\/8596\/files\/f1ec587e-il_fullxfull.8064528252_oll2.jpg?v=1788192186","url":"https:\/\/thelunaandloom.com\/products\/ruth-and-rosa-bookmark-three-pines-cozy-mystery-literary-gift-gamache","provider":"The Luna and Loom","version":"1.0","type":"link"}