Ruggles of Red Gap

Ruggles is a proper English valet who has spent his entire life in service to aristocracy, devoted to polishing the ego of the Honourable George Vane-Basingwell and maintaining the sacred rituals of the English upper class. Then George loses him in a poker game to an American couple from Red Gap, Nebraska, and Ruggles finds himself shipped west to the wilds of small-town America. The comedy ignites immediately: Ruggles is mortified to discover his new masters have no idea what a gentleman's gentleman actually does, while the townspeople, mistaking him for a wealthy British export, treat him like royalty. The joy lies in Ruggles' horrified observations about American informality, his desperate attempts to maintain dignity while being asked to serve beans directly from a pot, and his gradual, bewildered discovery that freedom might not be the catastrophe he always assumed. Wilson writes with sharp satirical wit, skewering both British pomposity and American naïveté, but the novel's heart beats unexpectedly warm. Ruggles of Red Gap is a delightful period piece about identity, belonging, and whether a man can truly be happy without someone to wait on hand and foot.