THE BORDER BETWEEN US

By Rudy Ruiz

Literary Fiction

Publisher: Blackstone Publishing

Pages: 256

Publication Date: August 27, 2024

SYNOPSIS

The Border Between Us is a poignant coming-of-age novel from one of the most exciting voices in fiction. Ramón López was born along the US–Mexico border but is determined to get out and embrace the American dream—and he’s not sure whether his complicated family is a help or a hindrance. As the son of immigrants, as Ramón grows, his admiration for his entrepreneurial father sours as he watches his

dad’s dreams of success wither on the vine. Ramón’s mother is constantly preoccupied with his younger brother, who struggles with intellectual disabilities. And the outside world is rife with danger and temptations threatening to distract Ramón from his dreams of making it to New York and succeeding as an artist.

As dreams clash with reality and values conflict with desires, Ramón finds the American dream within his reach—but will it demand too big a sacrifice?

Award-winning author Rudy Ruiz brilliantly captures the beauty and danger of border life as Ramón struggles to understand his home and his place in the world. The Border Between Us is a stunning, compassionate story about a son’s fraught relationship with his father, the challenges of pursuing a creative life when one comes from humble beginnings, and the power of embracing one’s whole self.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rudy Ruiz is the author of The Resurrection of Fulgencio Ramirez and Valley of Shadows. He is a winner of the Jesse H. Jones Award for Best Book of Fiction, the Gulf Coast Prize in Fiction, and multiple International Latino Book Awards. A bilingual native of the

US–Mexico border, he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Harvard University. Rudy lives and writes in Texas and New England with his wife and children. Visit his website at RudyRuiz.com.

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“Didn’t you have to break the rules sometimes simply to do what was right?”

The Border Between Us by Rudy Ruiz is a passionate bildungsroman that will push and pull you through every emotion imaginable. At the start, Ramón Lopez is a young boy growing up in the 1970s in Brownsville on the US/Mexico border. The Lopez family is continuously hit with financial struggles and despair amidst hard work, big dreams, and the fierce familial ties that bind.

This remarkable story is a complex dichotomy of contradictions and similarities existing as one yet undulating toward and away from each other, bound by an invisible thread of hope and fear. Ruiz expertly delivers this exquisitely written novel about generations colliding and collapsing in a heap of resentment and tender forgiveness, with laughter and tears, dreams and death cohabitating across the pages.

Everyone’s idea of success is different, with the path flowing toward the American Dream littered with good intentions, rosy outlooks, failures, betrayals, bootstraps, broken hearts, and self-truths. Both diverging from and staying true to self can come at a high price. Ramón must decide what success actually means to him and how much is too much to pay for it. The common adage is that when you hit rock bottom, there is nowhere else to go but up. Ramón, however, discovers a difficult yet valuable reality: beauty and success await him there in the dregs, nestled among the grief and mangled dreams and ready to lead him where he needs to go.  

When the dust settles at the end of this brilliant novel, the so-called American Dream cannot be painted with a single brush stroke. Every person’s dream is unique and not tied to a location, a country, a family, or an idea. Each dream is connected to the individual heart and must be nurtured and cherished until the final beat, where the dream can finally be complete and savored.

Ramón discovers that a border is more than a river or a fence dividing countries, properties, and families. Sometimes that border between us marches in lockstep with the border within us and within families, often remaining blurred and distorted yet forever entwined.

Ruiz’s writing style is pure poetry, with The Border Between Us filled with gorgeous prose, diverse characters, and a fluid plot. All this and more provide the reader with a sense of wonder and hopefulness that the borders between and within all of us can be lowered and replaced with an abundance of luscious lime trees, progress, family, friends, resiliency, and acceptance. A lovely sentiment toward the end of this novel is that true success is when the American Dream bleeds away from the individual and into the world to fulfill the dreams of others.

You will not want to miss out on this timely and absolutely stunning novel by Rudy Ruiz.

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