Please join author / actress Deborah Goodrich Royce for An Author's Afternoon in The Locher Room. Daytime fans will recognize Deborah from All My Children where she played Silver Kane, the sister of the legendary Erica Kane. Deborah will be here to discuss her second novel, Ruby Falls.

Deborah made her debut as an author in 2019 with Finding Mrs. Ford. She also worked as a story editor for Miramax Films, and was instrumental in the development of such films as Emma, The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain, and A Wrinkle in Time. With her husband, she restored and reopened the Avon Film Center, a 1939 landmark in Stamford, CT, which now operates as a not-for-profit dedicated to independent, classic, foreign, and documentary films.

RUBY FALLS:

On July 12, 1968, six-year-old Ruby suffered a shattering loss: her father. She remembers holding his hand and trying heartily not to be afraid while standing in the pitch-black dark, with the sound of roaring water and feel of dank air surrounding her. They were in a cave—in the middle of a clump of tourists visiting Ruby Falls in Lookout Mountain, Tennessee. Then, Ruby remembers her Daddy letting go of her hand... and disappearing. How could a full-grown man simply vanish—and worse, abandon his little girl, his own flesh and blood child?

Yes, that terrible day and the mystery of what happened to her father took a toll. But, with the help of her strong, devoted mother and therapy, that little girl survived—and vowed to leave Ruby behind. Transformed into Eleanor Russell, she finds fame in her early 20s as a daytime soap opera star in New York City. Then, on the cusp on her 26th birthday, she loses her job over some sort of controversy. To avoid publicity, Eleanor flees to Rome and, after a whirlwind six-week romance, returns home with a dashing husband, Orlando Montague. The son of an English aristocrat and Chinese refugee, Orlando is an antiques dealer—like her Daddy was. Determined to start anew in Los Angeles, Eleanor finds and snaps up a storybook cottage in the Hollywood Hills. She lands a plum role—the lead in a remake of Rebecca, keeping all the mystery of Hitchcock’s rendition of Daphne Du Maurier’s classic, but revamping up the horror. With the perfect husband, perfect home, and perfect career boost, Eleanor should be perfectly happy. And she is—or so, she keeps telling herself—even when Orlando begins acting “unkind,” at best.

Keeping the tension mounting and the shockers coming, Ruby Falls follows Eleanor as she begins to suspect that her perfect husband is a liar with sinister motives. Then, her work on the set of a chilling movie starts to blur with her life at home. Is Eleanor trapped in a dangerous marriage? Or is the horror and pain of her childhood coming back to destroy her?


Original Airdate: 1/7/2022