Run, Rose, Run

Red-gold-haired, high-heel wearing Ruthanna Ryder, who dresses for her shows in “more sequins than all the contestants on RuPaul’s Drag Race combined” (405), has already attained stardom and is looking to wind down from it. On the surface, this woman, who lives in a lavish mansion and jokes that “there was no such thing as having too much” (335), seems the opposite of the destitute, starving AnnieLee, who hungers for both food and a new career. However, the diminutive stature, the assertive, surly attitude, and the natural talent of both makes them more alike than different. Ruthanna Ryder is a pseudonym, as the star’s real name, Pollyanna Poole, was deemed too hillbilly to attract the right kind of attention. Both Ruthanna (Pollyanna) and AnnieLee (Rose) hailed from rural poverty and had to work their careers from the ground up, singing in honky-tonk bars. Both women’s speech is effusive, rich with imagery and anecdote, and makes ample use of hyperbole—which aligns with their compelling songwriting. While author Dolly Parton attests that she’d never stomp on someone’s dream and tell them to leave Nashville as Ruthanna did, Ruthanna represents the glamor and success of the latter half of Parton’s career.

However, Ruthanna’s formidable exterior conceals her heartbreak over her daughter Sophia’s tragic death, which has left her with a flood of negative associations about the commercialization of country music. This, in turn, leaves her unwilling to perform her songs publicly. Still, her inability to stop composing indicates that she continues to express her creative talent. Ruthanna’s ambivalent attitude toward what she can’t stay away from causes her to give contradictory advice to AnnieLee, whom—contrary to Mikey Shumer’s clichéd patriarchal narrative of female competition—she wants to nurture and protect. A strident feminist, Ruthanna is aware of studio executives’ continuing prejudice against female talent and therefore scorns any offer that might force AnnieLee to serve the interests of commerce or a male star’s ego. She thus plays an important role as a mentor, in encouraging AnnieLee to dream bigger and not settle for anything less than full self-expression.

Ruthanna undergoes her own character transformation, as AnnieLee’s influence causes her to rediscover the hunger to play before an audience. This revitalization also manifests in her love life, as she embarks on a new relationship with Jack Holm. This bears testament to the reality that a star’s career—and life—have phases and that renewal can manifest at any age.

Ethan Blake, who looks like a classic country heartthrob, wearing faded denim and being as “dark-haired and coal-eyed and as long-legged as a young Johnny Cash” (36), turns out to be the opposite of an egotistical male country star. Ethan, whom Ruthanna repeatedly calls “one of the good ones—as a musician and man” (138), is the redemptive male who enables AnnieLee to hope for a good relationship after her multiple disappointments with men. Moreover, Ethan’s past willingness to stick with his ex-wife Jeanie, even after she was unfaithful to him, shows that he’s loyal and forms deep connections with women.

Ethan, who fought in the war in Afghanistan and saw his friends die, shares AnnieLee’s experience of facing hardship and healing himself through an almost religious belief in the redemptive power of country music, as he “studied the greats more than a preacher studies the Bible” (147) and became a musician of unparalleled talent. However, while Mikey Shumer taunts Ethan that he’s taking the effeminate path of backing up Ruthanna and AnnieLee’s talent and assures him that he himself could be a star, Ethan shrinks from the idea of notoriety and prefers to focus on the craft of music. This is evident, too, in his making guitars and in knowing “every inch and every joint of the instrument” (120), thus further personalizing his artistry.

Still, while Ethan’s preference of craft and service over show highlights his intrinsic earthy values and protective nature, his self-effacement and reluctance to play his own songs stem from the deep shame of having to flee his life in North Carolina after gaining notoriety as the chief suspect in his wife’s death and going to jail for six months. Arguably, Ethan’s traumatic experience of fame makes him unconsciously resist it and thus limits the exposure of his talent.

AnnieLee’s entry into his life forces him to take the spotlight, both literally and metaphorically, as he sings a duet with her, bolsters her when she’s feeling shaky, and physically takes on the men who stand in her way, eviscerating them in expert military style. The shift in his character from nurturing to active casts him in the traditional hero role, as he rescues his love interest from harmful forces. Here, assertiveness and supportiveness become one, as Ethan represents a healthy balance of traditionally masculine and feminine traits.

Jack Holm is Ruthanna and later AnnieLee’s manager. He drinks old-fashioned cocktails and is “distinguished-looking […] with his bespoke suit and hand-tooled boots, his head of silver hair, and his hideously expensive Patek Philippe” (57). While the hand-tooled boots are a reference to the footwear staple of country music and his past as a musician, the sharp dressing indicates that he’s a fitting match for the glamorous Ruthanna. Although his rival, Mikey Shumer, considers him an “old fossil” (245), Jack is progressive in his willingness to allow the women he represents to dictate the orientation of their careers.

Although Jack was long Ruthanna’s manager, the break in her career following Sophia’s death was a period when they didn’t see each other. Ruthanna’s noticing a “newly bare ring finger” (57), which indicates Jack’s recent divorce, sparks the idea that their relationship can go further. Moreover, Jack is unintimidated by Ruthanna’s brash manner of speaking and is a proponent of her returning to the stage, where she belongs. Daring Ruthanna to go further continues to be part of Jack’s nature, as he refuses to take no for answer in arranging for her motorbike lessons. The acquisition of a motorbike represents a feeling of renewed youth and libido for them both.

Blond, “well-tanned” Mikey Shumer virtually defines “slick” (160). He prides himself in being direct, determined, and efficient. However, a cold, calculating nature belies his presentable exterior, as AnnieLee feels him “scrutinizing her as carefully as a truck he was thinking of buying” (159). While AnnieLee doesn’t instinctively feel that Mikey is the monster Ruthanna described, the simile of him appraising AnnieLee like a truck later corresponds to the memory of Gus Hobbs selling her like a “goddamn used car” (398). Here, both images imply a degree of objectification and dehumanization. Mikey cares only about his own profit and is the opposite of industry-grown Jack and the others, who put music first. The harshest evidence of this is that Mikey objectified and appraised Ruthanna’s daughter Sophia and, finding her a liability, coolly advised her boyfriend Trace Jones to dump her, which indirectly led to her death.

The violence that Shumer is capable of is further evident in his thuggish bodyguards and the way he dangled a man out window when he refused to give his artist enough airplay. While he doesn’t directly damage AnnieLee, the authors, buoyed by Ruthanna, set him up as a suspect for being behind the attacks on her person. However, it’s important for AnnieLee’s character development and the plot’s suspense that her real attackers represent the past she’s trying to run from and keep secret rather than a facet of her present.

Ruthanna’s daughter, Sophia, was the archetypal troubled child of a famous parent, the child who faces addiction and ends up in rehab. Ruthanna knows that Sophia’s surreal childhood, in which she was hounded by reporters and continually asked about her mother, taught her the harsh lesson that “the world cared so much about” Ruthanna and “didn’t care as much about her” (169). This statement implies that mother and daughter were put into unhealthy competition with each other and connotes the sense that Ruthanna’s success came at the expense of her daughter’s. Ruthanna’s unconscious understanding of this contributes to her decision to stop performing publicly. Her relationship with AnnieLee, who reminds Ruthanna of Sophia, enables the older star to redeem herself as a parent and to put herself in the position of mentor, as she puts another young woman’s career before her own.

Moreover, while Ruthanna and AnnieLee got to reap the rewards of hard work, Sophia had everything handed to her on a plate. Because of this—and some subconscious resentment toward her mother—Sophia rebelled and took the destructive path of drinking and partying rather than applying herself to musical and academic success. Sophia further rebels against her mother when she takes up with Trace Jones, the Mikey Shumer-managed “hat act” who dumped her on tour, causing the substance binge that led to her death. It’s gutting for Ruthanna that while she was able to fight and earn a place in country music, her daughter was treated like one of its dispensable girls when Mikey Shumer decided that Sophia was bad for her boyfriend’s image.

Although Sophia doesn’t explicitly appear in the novel, she has a physical presence in the “angel light of evening” (168), when Ruthanna’s memories of her are strongest. The beautiful quality of the light manifests Sophia’s essential goodness, while its appearance at the end of the day indicates the bittersweet feeling that comes with having to accept that she is gone. Arguably, Ruthanna’s experiences with Sophia influence her protective attitude toward AnnieLee.

Kip Hart is a country music superstar who sings catchy yet “stupid” songs with lyrics about wanting to make out with women. Rather than musical talent, Kip’s success comes from his charisma and carefully managed image, whereby his clothes were “carefully rugged, and he carried himself like a man used to being admired” (260). The phrase “carefully rugged” shows that Kip’s attention to detail goes into having the superficial appearance of an authentic country star rather than writing good songs. Unlike AnnieLee’s secondhand Frye boots, which are a mark of grassroots humility, Kip’s “hand-stitched boots,” which she guesses are worth “a solid four figures” (260), are an extravagance, even as they reference humble roots.

Kip shares country music officials’ sexism, as he refers to AnnieLee’s gig as the opening act of his show as “a buy-on” (261). When her talent eclipses his, he responds by refusing to let her perform with him again, revealing his fragile ego.

AnnieLee’s stepfather, Clayton, entered her life after her father walked out when she was seven and her mother remarried. While Clayton doesn’t appear until the end of the novel, AnnieLee’s sour memories of him and wanting to be the opposite of his drunken, lying self, set up a bitter impression. By revealing that Clayton beat AnnieLee and her half-sisters and accused them of being “corrupted” when he was in fact corrupt, the authors dangle the narrative possibility that Clayton sexually abused AnnieLee.

Although Clayton was a tyrant when AnnieLee and her sisters were young, his “bad heart” in recent years has kept him from being as physically abusive; instead, he’s more of a tyrant in the sense that he keeps his two younger daughters prisoners in his house. Clayton’s relative harmlessness compared to Gus Hobbs and D, is evident in his clumsy physical appearance of being “a bulldog of a man, round and ugly and unsmiling” (374) and all the apparatus of having a secret fortress in allowing the weeds to grow and the building to go derelict. His shiny hunting vehicle, meanwhile, reveals his selfishness. Overall, Clayton’s physicality and dwelling show that his bark is worse than his bite and that he’s not the story’s real villain.

Gus Hobbs is AnnieLee’s onetime boyfriend. He’s attractively lean and muscular with “a hard almost handsome face” and a lupine appeal (387). Hobbs wolfishly charmed and complimented AnnieLee so that she’d run off with him and then proceeded to control her. His holding her hand so tight it hurt and commenting that she “wasn’t obedient enough or grateful enough” (398) revealed his sinister and misogynist nature even before he sold AnnieLee to D. That AnnieLee would have been interested in him testifies to her desire to get away from her stepfather. Although Hobbs handed AnnieLee over to D, he still had a vested interest in controlling her once she escaped from D, and a man who resembles him appears during her tour. His brutality toward her is evident when he ties and gags her in his basement, a symbol of how intensely he wants to keep her quiet and repress her.