"Is this… Naomi?" the women of Bethlehem asked when she arrived.
"Do not call me Naomi," she replied. "Call me Mara, for the Almighty has made my life very bitter."
She looked nothing like the woman who once danced in the harvest fields. Her hair gray, her eyes hollow.
They settled into a humble dwelling. And Ruth, ever devoted, rose with the dawn.
"Let me go to the fields," she said, "and gather leftover grain behind anyone who shows me favor."
Naomi nodded. "Go, my daughter."
Ruth entered the field of a man named Boaz—a relative of Elimelek. She did not know his name, only that the grain was good, and the workers kind.
But eyes watched her from a distance.