Florida Weekly (Naples)
This novel is much more than a coming of-age novel. Add in poverty, sickness, fear, and hope. All of these things help to make this novel soar.”
author of The Family Izquierdo Rubén Degollado
Like fruit picked from a tree, Rudy Ruiz’s The Border Between Us hands us moments of a childhood along the Mexican American border, some bitter as they portray the loss of innocence, others sweet as they look to a future filled with hope. This marvelous book is not just to be read. It is to be lived. Ruiz continues to astound us with his power as a storyteller.”
AudioFile
Narrator Eddie Lopez uses his impressive vocal talents to explore the emotional, often tense, relationship between Ramón and his father…Lopez shines…in this powerful story of a boy becoming a man.”
Pura Belpré Award–winning author Guadalupe García McCall
An exquisitely crafted, heartbreaking story about nurturing dreams, searching for self, and finding hope within the stifling embrace of a loving family, friends, and community in the beautiful, sometimes dangerous, borderlands of South Texas.”
Jennifer Givhan
Rudy Ruiz, a masterful storyteller, gripped me with his gorgeously wrought prose and an unforgettable narrator, Ramón, sweet, funny, kind, and the smartest boy who’s ever been swooped off the floor of his overcrowded border school to give the nuns a run for their money with his chile-packet enterprise. This border-crossing boy turned misguided young man stole my heart from the get-go. I couldn’t put his story down and in one sitting devoured this whole powerful and piquante bildungsroman, chock-full of Dungeons & Dragons, Evel Knievel, avocados stuffed with serranos, and La Virgen appearing on a Brownsville tree. At times wickedly funny, other times acerbic as a rotting pile of limes stuck in the back of a broken-down bakery truck, this portrait of a Mexican American artist as a young man examines not only the borders between us but those deeply embedded within us. You will root for Ramón the underdog and the family he can’t always appreciate but who shape him into the champion of his community he will become. A necessary and heartwarming tale.”
award-winning author of I Buried Paul Bruce Ferber
In a world where the mere mention of the word ‘border’ is tinder for outrage, Rudy Ruiz’s The Border Between Us paints a canvas as expansive as the Big River itself. Unflinching in its nuanced depiction of the harsh realities, it is Ruiz’s deep connection to his roots that shows us the magic, the beauty, and the spirit that might have otherwise eluded us. He also reminds the reader that borders are not limited to geography, centering the story around an often-volatile father-son relationship. Perhaps most inspiring is that as the young, determined Ramón Lopez weighs all that separates us, he manages not to lose sight of the bonds that unite us. A gorgeous novel, and a necessary one in these fraught times.”
Booklist (starred review)
Ruiz has written a poignant tale about an endearing underdog’s pursuit of the American dream.”
two-time Spur Award–winning author of Hollow James Wade
Rudy Ruiz has written the novel of the year. The Border Between Us places Ruiz at eye level with literary masters of cultural hybridity like Gloria Anzaldúa and Sandra Cisneros. As timely in its topics as it is timeless in its themes, Ruiz understands coming-of-age like few others. So rarely can an author dictate the very beating of our heart.”
author of Chicano Frankenstein Daniel A. Olivas
Following in the rich legacy of José Antonio Villarreal’s classic coming-of-age novel Pocho, Rudy Ruiz’s The Border Between Us renders the personal journey of Ramón López with exquisite clarity, compassion, and poignancy. But dare I say that Ruiz’s novel delves deeper into the intricacies of lives bisected by the cultures of Mexico and the US with the concomitant contradictions that ethnic and political allegiances bring to the fore. In the end, he has created a protagonist that is both original and familiar, one that will, no doubt, be recognized as one of our more beloved and complex fictional heroes. This is, quite simply, a stunning work of literature that will enrich as much as it enthralls.”
Audiofile
Eddie Lopez uses his impressive vocal talents…to convey a wide range of emotions in this powerful story of a boy becoming a man.”
author of Nobody’s Pilgrims and A Peculiar K Sergio Troncoso
Rudy Ruiz’s The Border Between Us breaks your heart more than once, as the teenage Ramón Lopez from Brownsville struggles to become a man to pursue his artistic dreams. The young Ramón leaves and returns to the border to fashion a new self that can live in different worlds. With sharp, simple prose, Ruiz expertly depicts a son learning to go beyond, yet still love his father. An affecting and engaging novel full of twists and turns that mirror that new self in the throes of becoming.”
Washington Independent Review of Books
Ruiz helps us appreciate the great gift that our manifold heritages truly are. He has written a sensitive novel that addresses many issues facing today’s teens—from cultural disorientation to cultural identity, from material poverty to excessive materialism, from addiction to negligent parents. It’s a provocative book and well worth the read.”
Kirkus Reviews
2024-08-03
A Mexican American aspiring artist pursues his dream despite harsh political, geographic, and familial realities.
In 1977, 9-year-old Ramón Lopez, born in the U.S. near the border with Mexico, dreams of an adult life in New York City as a celebrated artist. His family’s fraught dynamics serve as both an inspiration and a roadblock to his pursuit. His father sells tires and covertly transports undocumented Mexican immigrants, including children and babies, across the border by hiding them beneath the tires he carts every day. Ramón’s newborn brother is developmentally disabled. With an abundance of care and incisiveness, the novel charts Ramón’s journey and inner turmoil. Ruiz’s prose is lively, and his insights into daily life at the border are authoritative: “Beggars lined the street, shambling in grimy rags, shaking rusted cups jingling with loose change. Cars snaked towards the crossing. The queue would swell throughout the day. At the right instant, crossing could take merely five minutes, but during busy times it might consume an hour. Radiators would rebel. Steam would hiss. Tempers would flare….What did the innocent know about immigration officials and drug-sniffing German Shepherds salivating over the slope of the bridge? What did the baby comprehend about being discreet while breaking the law?” Ruiz is examining timely issues while remaining focused on the humanity of the immigrants, their desperation and desires. Seeing Ramón’s creative aspirations as representative of the immigrant border crossing, his father tells him, “You have to stick with it. And here, unlike south of the river, you have a chance to make it. That’s why we’re here. That’s why it’s called the American Dream, not the Mexican Dream.”
A moving story of one family’s toil amid a cultural struggle, told with precision and authenticity.
