Ruth's story
Ruth 1–4
A famine empties the house of bread, and a family of Bethlehem walks down to Moab to wait it out. Ten years later three widows set out for home and two arrive: Naomi, and Ruth the Moabite, who gleans in the barley of her dead husband's kinsman Boaz and becomes David's great-grandmother. The whole book happens on one road and in one town.
Down to Moab, and three graves
Ruth 1:1–5
In the days when the judges ruled, Elimelech takes Naomi and their two sons across the Jordan to Moab for bread. He dies there; the sons marry Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth, and in ten years they are dead too.
The road back to Bethlehem
Ruth 1:6–22
Naomi hears there is bread in Judah again and sets out with both daughters-in-law. On the road she sends them back; Orpah goes, and Ruth will not — where you go I will go. The two of them walk into Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.
The field of Boaz
Ruth 2
Ruth gleans behind the reapers and happens on the field of Boaz, a relative of Elimelech. He comes out from the town, asks who she is, and tells her to glean nowhere else. The threshing floor and the town gate that settle the rest of the book are never named, so the story's map ends here.