A poor high school student living in the fictional town of La Frontera in the 1950s beat the odds with relentless ambition and a little bit of luck in a new novel.
Brownsville-native and award-winning author Rudy Ruiz combines a love story with elements of magical realism and an exploration of the interaction between Mexican and American cultures in his first novel, “The Resurrection of Fulgencio Ramirez.”
The book’s protagonist, Fulgencio Ramirez is the son of impoverished immigrants. He meets Carolina Mendelssohn, the local pharmacist’s daughter, and it sparks an ambition and drive Fulgencio never felt before. He needed to go above and beyond expectations to earn her love.
“It's like (Fulgencio) felt like he'd been sleepwalking the first 15 years or so of his life. And when he met her, it was like he woke up,” explained Ruiz. “And what he woke up to was all sorts of feelings, from infatuation to attraction to ambition and to the sudden realization that if he wanted to be able to attain and sustain a relationship with someone like Carolina, he was going to have to make something of himself, something more than what he had been born into.”
“The Resurrection of Fulgencio Ramirez” weaves together the past and present, Fulgencio strives to succeed in America, break a mystical family curse and win back Carolina’s love after their doomed youthful romance.
The book was chosen by the Western Writers of America as a Finalist for Best Contemporary Novel and it was longlisted for the 31st annual Reading the West Book Awards.
Listen to a playlist curated for “The Resurrection of Fulgencio Ramirez” here.
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