Winner of the Jesse H. Jones Award for Best Book of Fiction
A visionary neo-Western blend of magical realism, mystery, and horror, Valley of Shadows sheds light on the dark past of injustice, isolation, and suffering along the US-Mexico border.
Solitario Cisneros thought his life was over long ago. He lost his wife, his family, even his country in the late 1870s when the Rio Grande shifted course, stranding the Mexican town of Olvido on the Texas side of the border. He’d made his brooding peace with retiring his gun and badge, hiding out on his ranch, and communing with horses and ghosts. But when a gruesome string of murders and kidnappings ravages the town, pushing its volatile mix of Anglo, Mexican, and Apache settlers to the brink of self-destruction, he feels reluctantly compelled to confront both life, and the much more likely possibility of death, yet again.
As Solitario struggles to overcome not only the evil forces that threaten the town but also his own inner demons, he finds an unlikely source of inspiration and support in Onawa, a gifted and enchanting Apache-Mexican seer who champions his cause, daring him to open his heart and question his destiny.
As we follow Solitario and Onawa into the desert, we join them in facing haunting questions about the human condition that are as relevant today as they were back then: Can we rewrite our own history and shape our own future? What does it mean to belong to a place, or for a place to belong to a people? And, as lonely and defeated as we might feel, are we ever truly alone?
Through luminous prose and soul-searching reflections, Rudy Ruiz transports readers to a distant time and a remote place where the immortal forces of good and evil dance amidst the shadows of magic and mountains.
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“Rudy Ruiz’s Valley of Shadows haunts with its trenchant historical accuracy woven dazzlingly with magical real elements that make this borderland Western horror leap off the page. Indeed, this powerful story wriggled into my heart and gut, like a snake seeking shelter in the scorched desert earth. Unsettling and uplifting, both. Filled with ghosts both literal and metaphorical in a desolate place overflowing with unforgettable characters whose stories are woven by a masterful storyteller, Ruiz’s Valley of Shadows is searing, incisive, and, at times, utterly terrifying.”
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Jennifer Givhan, author of River Woman, River Demon