Rudy Ruiz Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Rudy Ruiz is a bestselling and award-winning literary fiction novelist who is best known for his debut novel “The Resurrection of Fulgencio Ramirez.”

The novel would become a critically acclaimed novel that was the winner of the Best Audio Book and Best Latino Focused Fiction Book at the International Latino Book Awards.

The novel also made the finals for the Best Contemporary Novel Silver Spur Award by the Western Writers of America. He is also the author of “Seven for the Revolution,” a short story collection that was the winner of four International Latino Book Awards.
As a prolific author of short stories, his stories have appeared in “BorderSenses,” “Notre Dame Review,” “New Texas,” and “The Ninth Letter.”

Most of Rudy’s works explore themes of social injustice, cultural collision, spirituality, multiculturalism, acculturation, immigration, and borders as well as climate change and intolerance.

Rudy Ruiz has come to be known for advocating for multicultural communities as her works give voice to the voiceless. In addition to that his op-eds and essays have appeared on CNN and other notable publications.
To support diverse perspectives and communities, he is an active member of “Harvardwood,” “PEN America,” “Writer’s League of Texas,” and the “International Society of Latino Authors.”

Ruiz had a very interesting childhood as he grew up in Northern Mexico and Texas, even though he was born in Brownsville Texas.

Both his maternal grandfather and his father had ranches in Mexico and hence he spent many teenage and childhood years there, particularly in Matamoros.
During this time, he also loved to watch Mexican charro and Westerns with his father, and these imprinted on his psyche.

Years later, his teenage son having known about his background asked him to pen a Western horror and this resonated with him.

He knew that doing a revisionist Western with Native American and Mexican heroes which was then lacking in American Western would be an exciting challenge.

Once he decided on the overall themes and setting of his novel, the characters naturally came to him. He had it very easy since he used to spend a lot of time with his father and grandfather who were fantastic ranchers of their time.
Ruiz published “The Resurrection of Fulgencio Ramirez” his debut in 2020 and has now become one of the most unique voices in literary fiction writing revisionist Westerns.

Rudy Ruiz often asserts that family has been one of his most important influences.

He happened to grow up in a family where good storytellers were many. His maternal grandmother was one of the best storytellers ever and there is nothing he loved better than listening to her stories.
Even though, he was told stories that were very true, later in life he felt the desire to take the stories and revise them while imagining and adding other elements to the story.

Apart from the storytellers in his family, Ruiz also pays homage to several literary influences. He has often spoken about his love for the likes of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Cormac McCarthy.
In writing his novels, he always tries to find a delicate balance between McCarthy’s gritty world-building, even as he incorporates Marquez’s magical realist lyrical style.

Rudy Ruiz’s novel “The Resurrection of Fulgencio Ramirez” is an interesting work of romance that tells the story of Carolina Mendelssohn and Fulgencio Ramirez.
The former is the daughter of a La Frontera pharmacist with whom Fulgencio has fallen and will do anything to make her his.

But they find themselves pulled apart by outside forces, which ultimately results in Carolina marrying someone else, while Fulgencio ends up a pharmacist.

But decades later, while poring over the local obituaries, he comes across some exciting news. Carolina’s husband is dead and he finally has his second chance at love.
But to get Carolina to love him back after so many years and so soon after the death of her husband is not so easy.

Moreover, Fulgencio’s past has some darkness that has haunted his life since birth, denying him and tripping him up whenever he seeks happiness.
It is an interesting and layered novel that goes back generations and tells of the intimate details of second chances, love, mistakes, and rage.

“Valley of Shadows” by Rudy Ruiz is a fascinating work of fiction set in West Texas in 1883.
When the Rio Grande shifts course, Olvido the Mexican city is left stranded just north of the new border between Mexico and the United States.

When a series of horrific and mysterious crimes grip the border town, a former Mexican law enforcement officer who had become a recluse following retirement comes back.
He intends to restore order to Olvido and to stop or failing that, slow down the abductions of children which has seen an alarming increase.

In the face of hostile Anglo settlers and skeptics Solitario Cisneros, a war-weary charro is struggling to deal with threats to his city in addition to his inner demons.

He has lived with a mystical curse that has dogged his steps for years and is resigned to his fate until he meets Onawa. She is a beautiful and gifted Mexican Apache seer, who dares him to change the course of his life when she joins his mission.
The work is a neo-Western blend of horror, mystery, and magical realism which explores the shadowy past of suffering, isolation, and injustice along the Mexico-United States border.

Rudy Ruiz’s “Seven for the Revolution” is a collection of seven short stories exploring Latinos who live a very hard life juxtaposed against the fraught relations between their adopted and native countries.
The author writes about characters grappling with injustice while pursuing their American dreams.

Many of these stories show some interesting innovation and creativity as they provide a voice to the voiceless and paint nuanced pictures of Latinos, who will do anything to get what increasingly seems like an impossible dream to achieve.
These are well-executed stories offering fresh perspectives on some significant societal issues.

Writing with emotion and authority about some issues that he seems to care a lot, he still manages to tell a good story.