Before Ruby Red, William Price Fox published two collections of short stories and two novels. The stories [collected in Southern Fried and Southern Fried Plus Six] … are excellent. In them, Fox moves through the slums of his native Columbia, South Carolina, with much ease and little pretension, producing several memorable "characters" and a number of good, quick scenes that allow no room for the sentimentality that often turns up in stories of the reminiscence variety. The novels, though, are far from being successful. Dr. Golf … is a disastrous collection of golf jokes in the form of an advice column. Only the most dedicated golfer would be entertained by it; but dedicated golfers, I bet, have heard most of the jokes. Moonshine Light, Moonshine Bright … gets things back to Columbia's slums. It concerns two adolescents … who have much time and little money on hand for the summer…. [The slums produce] good "characters" and tales, but the author has trouble hanging them together. For long stretches, the book loses track of Earl and Coley and their Hudson while Fox digresses nostalgically on growing up in Columbia and on various characters who wander in and out of the narrative. I think that Moonshine might have been better off as half a dozen stories and sketches than as novel. For that matter, these two novels make one wonder why Fox turned away from short fiction.

Ruby Red, however, marks some progress in Fox's move from short stories to novels. It does have some of the problems of the first two efforts: Fox gets caught up in some Columbia stories at the expense of the narrative, and he still delights in "characters," whether they move with the story or across it…. But in spite of the digressions and a few one-shot characters, the goings-on among this crowd make superb fun that slips out of Fox's control only because of its exuberance. (pp. 610-11)

The only lags in the action occur when Fox starts in on the Nashville scene. He does not know it as well as he knows Columbia, and he bogs down with some of the behind-the-scenes action at the Grand Ole Opry….

But Ruby is good enough to hold things together and keep them going most of the time…. Because she is such an unassailable character, Fox is able to avoid the cliché of country girl seduced by big city. In fact, the best touch of the novel is that one can hardly tell whether Nashville takes advantage of Ruby or Ruby takes advantage of Nashville. She is not famous at the end, but indications are that she will make it or be damned, or both.

Fox, as novelist, shares a few things with his character. He has struggled through some agonies, namely Dr. Golf and Moonshine. But now, in Ruby, he seems to have gotten the upper hand on his new genre, to have learned to aim his mobs of characters and his good episodes in one direction. And I think we can anticipate the complete success of the novelist as well as that of his character. (p. 612)