Pearl in the Mist

Pearl in the Mist is the second book in the Landry Family series by author V.C. Andrews. It is told from the point of view of Ruby Landry.

Summary

After the events of Ruby, Ruby Landry and her spiteful yet paralyzed twin Gisselle Dumas are sent to Greenwood School for Girls by their father and stepmother, Pierre and Daphne Dumas.

Ruby isn't accepted by the Greenwood students due to her Cajun background, while Gisselle plots to make sure that Ruby is kicked out as soon as possible. Despite her problems, she makes a friend in blind piano player Louis Turnball and even reconsumates her relationship with Beau Andreas. However, Ruby soon finds out that Pierre has died of a heart attack, and the school is threatening to expel her when eyewitness accounts say that she's been having sexual relations with boys in various spots around the campus. As it turns out, she is being framed by Gisselle, whose paralysis is a ruse.

Nonetheless, Ruby leaves Greenwood when she learns that she has become pregnant with Beau's child. Daphne arranges for Ruby to have an abortion, instead she escapes back to her home town of Houma and returns to Paul Tate, her half-brother. He tells Ruby that her Grandperè Jack drowned in the swamps, and Paul offers her a home for her and her baby in a newly built mansion named Cypress Woods.

In the climax, Ruby gives birth to her daughter, Pearl Landry, in a hurricane which blows away her shack home. In the end, the two go to live with Paul.