Visiting Author – Alexandra Hayne – What Ruth Learned
Date and Time
- Saturday, Aug 29, 2026 4:30pm - 5:30pm
Location
Francie & Finch Bookshop
130 S. 13th St.
Category
Details
On Saturday, August 29th Francie & Finch will be welcoming Omaha author Alexandra Hayne as she presents her debut novel What Ruth Learned, a novel of “secrets, reinvention,and the stories we inherit”!
Call the shop to pre-order your copy today!
Abou the Book:
A novel of secrets, reinvention, and the stories we inherit
Ruth Sullivan never expected to return to Los Angeles. But when her life stalls out, she is pulled back to her hometown — and into the mystery of her family’s past. What begins as a quest to remake her own life becomes a journey through forgotten journals, faded photographs, and the shadows of 1950s Hollywood.
In a dual-timeline narrative that spans decades, Ruth uncovers the truth about a woman who called herself C-Note, a priest with a past, and a marriage that unraveled under the weight of ambition and silence. As Ruth pieces together the fragments of lives she never knew, she must confront her own choices, her fractured family, and the legacy she is poised to carry forward.
What Ruth learns does change her life, but not in the way she first imagined.
About the Author:
Alexandra Hayne was born and raised in Los Angeles in a movie industry family. She graduated from Van Nuys High School at sixteen, left home, and promptly flunked out of UCLA. A year later, a little older and maybe a little wiser, she returned to college, eventually earning a bachelor’s degree in English from California State University Northridge and a master’s degree in journalism from UC Berkeley. An award-winning journalist, she worked for thirty-five years as a reporter and editor in print and online news media in California and Iowa, and, in Nebraska, at the Lincoln Journal Star and the Omaha World-Herald, where she was the founding editor of Omaha.com. She is the mother of three and grandmother of four. When she is not writing, reading, or spending time with friends and family, she can often be found listening to live blues at one of the many fine dive bars in Omaha, Nebraska, where she lives. WHAT RUTH LEARNED is her first novel.
