In a small town in Wyoming, Datri lives in a house with her mother and two older sisters. Their neighbors are moving to Austrailia. On the day they leave town, they give Datri's mother their upright piano. Datri is five years old, and her life is forever changed by this event. Fourteen years later, Datri stumbles into the home of an 80 year old piano teacher from Brooklyn. After an abrupt interview and audition, in which Datri nervously fumbles through the piece, Datri is accepted as a student. Datri is 19 years old, and her life is, again, forever changed by this event.

The piano teacher, who will later be called "Ruby" in Datri's work, is frail but outspoken. She has a thick Brooklyn accent and her hair is wrapped in a perfect French twist. She is intimidating. She is a masterful musician. Her eyes are full of light. She is strict. She transforms Datri's playing. They are together two days a week, often for the whole afternoon. She becomes one of Datri's closest friends.

Ruby lives alone. She is from Poland, born into a Jewish family that left Europe shortly before World War II. During their afternoons together, interwoven with piano lessons, she tells Datri about growing up in a poor neighborhood in Brooklyn, her husband, her concert in New York's Town Hall when she was fourteen years old, her obsession with the masterful playing of Arthur Rubenstein.

Datri majors not in music, but in Russian, and spends a summer in Russia and Poland. She visits Auschwitz the day before she returns to the United States.

Twenty four hours later, Datri lands in the States and spends several days visiting her grandmother in an assisted living community. Her grandmother is very lucid, but not healthy. One morning after breakfast, they are looking at photo albums. There is an entire album of 1933 Europe, summer school in Switzerland, photos of classmates and friends. They are mostly Jewish; they are from all over Europe. In the photos, Datri's grandmother is the age that Datri is now. Neither of them mention the fate of the classmates, and Datri stares at her shoes, which are still covered with the grey mud of Auschwitz.

The moment passes, and they spend the day looking at old photos. Datri's grandmother tells her about the Depression, the War, life after the War, her travels across Africa. This is the last visit Datri has with her grandmother.

Soon after, Datri is at the grocery store in the check out line. A fellow piano student spots her and lets her know that Ruby has recently passed away.

Years later, in a cramped room with only enough room for the piano it holds, the song "Ruby" is written in a single tearful sitting.