Kate Riley’s novel ‘Ruth’ was inspired by her year in an insular religious community

NPR's Book of the Day

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Books, Arts

4.2 • 672 Ratings

🗓️ 2 September 2025

⏱️ 11 minutes

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Summary

Author Kate Riley says her book Ruth was partly based on her year spent living in an insular religious community. The debut novel explores what it’s like to live in a world without total access to information, despite the protagonist's intense curiosity. In today’s episode, Riley speaks with NPR’s Ayesha Rascoe about the Peace Church tradition, how her interior life shaped the novel, and why this might be Riley’s first and last book.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Empire's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong. There's a lot of digital ink being spilled
0:07.6	about how the internet is breaking our brains. That unfettered access to just about any information
0:14.0	you might want maybe isn't actually all that healthy for us. But is the opposite any better?
0:20.7	Kate Riley is a writer who spent
0:22.2	about a year living in a cloistered Christian commune, one where access to information was limited,
0:28.3	which is tough for a naturally inquisitive person. Riley's debut novel, Ruth, is about a girl
0:33.5	born into such a community. And Riley spoke with Empire's Aisha Roscoe about how either end of the information access
0:40.2	spectrum doesn't really fix what makes it so painful to be human.
0:45.7	That's coming up.
0:47.4	In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.
0:52.1	Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors.
0:56.7	On our new show, Sources and Methods. NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people
1:02.0	helping you understand why distant events matter here at home. Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:11.6	Roof doesn't fit in, and the entire point of her insular religious community is to fit in.
1:19.0	Roof tells jokes. Ruth has ideas.
1:21.8	She reads everything she can get her hands on, but those choices are pretty limited.
1:27.2	It took Ruth trial and mortifying error to learn what of the Bible was now accurate only in
1:31.9	metaphor.
1:33.1	Ethiopians, Jews, and Greeks still existed.
1:35.6	Pharisees, Samaritans, and barbarians did not.
1:38.6	Magi still existed as Persians.
1:40.9	Leprosy still existed.
	...

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