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WORK TITLE: Ruth Run
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COUNTRY: United States
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PERSONAL
Female.
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CAREER
Writer. Worked in the field of data networking, specializing in network security and architectures.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
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Elizabeth Kaufman is a debut novelist who described herself as a “not-novelist” before she accepted a dare from a friend to write a novel. After finishing the novel in less than a year, she found an agent and a publisher, and the book was published in 2025.
Ruth Run is about a twenty-six-year-old microchip designer named Ruth who uses her expertise to become a cybercriminal and steal $250 million from the banking system. When she realizes she has been discovered, she runs for her life from government agents who want to neutralize her as a threat and see what she knows. Ruth has only her wits (and wit) and loyal dog. The novel also introduces another narrator: a man named Mike who has been obsessed with Ruth since they worked together several years before. The story alternates between their perspectives, as Ruth meets a variety of weird characters and Mike tries to track her down.
Reviewers were impressed with Kaufman’s debut. A writer in Publishers Weekly called the book “nearly impossible to put down,” as they enjoyed its “perfectly drawn” main characters and the “pedal-to-the-metal” pacing. They called the story an “irresistible cat-and-mouse thriller.” In Booklist, Stephanie Turza praised the novel for “skillfully mixing intrigue, technology, and sharp psychological insight.” Turza called it a “fresh addition to the genre” that includes both “madcap circumstances” and “ethical dilemmas.” A contributor in Kirkus Reviews agreed, describing the book as a “diverting and funny-as-hell cyber caper.”
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BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, February, 2025, Stephanie Turza, review of Ruth Run, p. 34.
Kirkus Reviews, March 1, 2025, review of Ruth Run.
Publishers Weekly, February 17, 2025, review of Ruth Run, p. 33.
ONLINE
Writer’s Digest, https://www.writersdigest.com/ (April 14, 2025), Robert Lee Brewer, author interview.
Elizabeth Kaufman: My Advice to Writers Is To Write
In this interview, author Elizabeth Kaufman discusses how a dare from a friend turned into her debut novel, Ruth Run.
Robert Lee Brewer
Published Apr 14, 2025 7:49 AM EDT
Elizabeth Kaufman had a career in data networking, specializing in network security products and architectures. She now lives in rural northern Colorado.
Author photo of Elizabeth Kaufman standing outside, she's standing looking toward our right so she is in profile, she's wearing sunglasses and has a large bird on her arm.
Elizabeth Kaufman | Photo by Sara Miller
In this interview, Elizabeth discusses how a dare from a friend turned into her debut novel, Ruth Run, how her views on writing a novel changed throughout the process, and more.
Name: Elizabeth Kaufman
Literary agent: Nicole Aragi
Book title: Ruth Run
Publisher: Penguin Press
Release date: April 15, 2025
Genre/category: Literary fiction; mystery/thriller
Elevator pitch: Twenty-six-year-old Ruth engineers a backdoor into a microchip so she can rob banks through their firewalls. She has $250 million stashed offshore when she realizes someone has discovered her hack and is coming after her. She runs, hoping to disappear, until she gets tired of being afraid and doubles back to confront her pursuers.
Book cover for author Elizabeth Kaufman's new book titled Ruth Run.
Bookshop | Amazon
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What prompted you to write this book?
A friend challenged me to write something fun that she’d enjoy reading. I’d given up on publishing fiction, so my only goal was to make her laugh. And I was trying to sneak some technical content in there—a little fiber hidden in the ice cream. I didn’t think I could write a novel, but I hate to wimp on a dare, which she knew. This is not the stupidest thing I’ve done on impulse.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
The entire process took just under two years—I started the book May 13, 2023, and it’s out April 15, 2025. The most significant plot change from first draft to final was the end. My initial ending was a lot lighter. I was so surprised to have written the thing at all, and it wasn’t going further than one person’s email. When the story turned into a novel, I wanted an ending that made sense for Ruth.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
So many surprises. I’d co-authored a technical book for Wiley in 1999 and thought I knew something about the process. The first step was the same—write the book. Everything else was different. Penguin is a meticulous press, and the people have deep, sometimes arcane expertise in each step of production. So much goes into a beautiful book. And a quality audiobook—it’s a good thing that wasn’t my job. I learned I can’t use commas. My whole relationship to punctuation is more rudimentary than I’d imagined. Probably the most useful lesson was that once the text is finalized, there’s a year of mostly gut-curdling silence. It was best for me to think of Ruth as lost luggage. Maybe I’d see it again someday, but waiting for news was a fast ride to madness.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
I’m a rookie and every bit of this surprised me. As a committed not-novelist, I was surprised to find I have a lot of opinions about novel writing and writing in general. I count syllables in dialogue—that was something I didn’t know about myself. I got stuck a couple of times and realized I was distracted by some idea of the story inconsistent with the characters. I’ve always been irritated by authors who say they can’t control their characters. It seems so precious when we all know who runs the keyboard. Turns out to be mostly true and I’ve had to retract my judgey thoughts about that. Probably the biggest surprise is that people like the story and say interesting things about it.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
Pain relief. I hope they laugh. Anything beyond that is a bonus.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
I got so lucky to get an agent and a contract and a book. For people that want to publish, that’s going to seem like the most interesting part of the story. Maybe it is, but the part I could control was thousands of hours of writing that came before all that, learning how to edit my own stuff, making things no one else ever saw. I can’t tell anyone how to reproduce the insanely improbable events that turned Ruth Run into a novel. I can’t tell anyone how to write either, but that’s the job and the thing we can work on without waiting for miracles. And if you do get some publishing gatekeeper person to look at your stuff, they’re going to decide in 30 seconds whether or not to keep reading. So, my advice to writers is to write. Talking about writing is like reading about running. It’s fun, but beside the point. So, if you’re a writer reading this, stop. Go work on your own story.
Elizabeth Kaufman had a career in data networking, specializing in network security products and architectures. She now lives in rural northern Colorado.
Ruth Run
Elizabeth Kaufman. Penguin Press, $29 (304p)
ISBN 978-0-593-83264-6
Kaufman debuts with an irresistible cat-and-mouse thriller about a cybercriminal and her stalker. Ruth, 26, has created a microchip that allows her to skim money from banks, but when her theft is detected by a government organization known only as the Agency, she's forced to leave her quaint San Francisco apartment and go on the run. In a parallel narrative from the perspective of Mike, the agent who flagged Ruth's illicit activity, the reader learns the pair met several years earlier as colleagues at a tech company. Mike's been stalking her ever since, fantasizing about their life together even as he pursues her on behalf of the government. Out on the road, Ruth meets an eccentric cast of characters, including a truck driver who's running bombs for a domestic terror organization and an honest bachelor on a religious homestead. Kaufman's plucky heroine and slimy villain are both perfectly drawn, and the pedal-to-the-medal pacing never lets up. This is nearly impossible to put down. Agent: Nicol Aragi, Aragi Inc. (Apr.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Ruth Run." Publishers Weekly, vol. 271, no. 7, 17 Feb. 2025, p. 33. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A829933363/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=ca813d6e. Accessed 23 Aug. 2025.
* Ruth Run. By Elizabeth Kaufman. Apr. 2025. 304p. Penguin Press, $29 (9780593832646); e-book, $14.99 (9780593832653).
Ruth is used to packing up quickly and not looking back. As a cybercriminal specializing in bank fraud, she has to be. Ruth is a brilliant and morally ambiguous hacker and usually works alone. But her last heist included some assistance from a seemingly trustworthy accomplice whom Ruth discovers has been siphoning money from a shared account. As federal agents get closer to uncovering the very lucrative and very illegal digital web Ruth's been weaving, she has to, like so many times before, move quickly and leave any loyalties behind. Kaufman immediately sets readers into Ruth's high-stakes world as a modern outlaw. Ruth chooses to move along the fringes of society, building massive amounts of wealth while staying undercover. Skillfully mixing intrigue, technology, and sharp psychological insight, Ruth Run is a nuanced portrayal of a brash antihero and the federal agent who's had his eye on her for years. Readers who loved The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo will enjoy the tech-savvy protagonists, madcap circumstances, and ethical dilemmas in this fresh addition to the genre, a debut thriller in which every character's motives and methods are equally up for debate.--Stephanie Turza
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Turza, Stephanie. "Ruth Run." Booklist, vol. 121, no. 11-12, Feb. 2025, p. 34. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A846924690/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=9dd73d8c. Accessed 23 Aug. 2025.
Kaufman, Elizabeth RUTH RUN Penguin Press (Fiction None) $29.00 4, 15 ISBN: 9780593832646
Readers are asked to root for an unrepentant thief in this first novel, a jokey cybercrime thriller.
Ruth, a hacker of microchips, would say that she isn't theworst kind of thief: "I skimmed chump change from banks. Are you really going to side with a bank?" Mike, formerly a salesman who worked with Ruth and now a clock puncher for what he calls "the Agency," has spent seven years on Ruth's trail. At some point during the car chase that brings Ruth and her nearly 3 pounds of stolen cash from Northern California to Nevada and beyond, she learns that she's being framed in the double murder of her coding assistant and his boyfriend. Ruth and Mike's cat-and-mouse act has an odd, couplelike tetchiness: Ruth considers Mike "a self-important jerk" and "a government flunky"; Mike sees Ruth as "an almost pathologically nonconformist spirit" who "dressed badly" and who, for all the good trying to elude him will do her, "might as well have tried to hide from the sky." Cat and mouse take turns narrating this cunning and constantly surprising novel, giving readers a passenger-seat view from which to witness each adversary's missteps and monitor their weaknesses. (Ruth's kryptonite: food and the dog she picks up on the road. Mike's kryptonite: Ruth.) Luddite readers will miss some of the novel's finer points, but underneath all its talk of microchips, databases, and firewalls is a character-fueled story in which a bit of heart occasionally seeps out from between the cracks in Ruth's armor, or at least tries to: "I reminded myself that life was about more than money; what money could buy also mattered."
No tech expertise required to enjoy this diverting and funny-as-hell cyber caper.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Kaufman, Elizabeth: RUTH RUN." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Mar. 2025. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A828785063/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=35805384. Accessed 23 Aug. 2025.