Ruiz
Set against the backdrop of the 1970s Peruvian revolution, Ruiz is an affecting historical novel.
Ron Winter’s emotive historical novel Ruiz is about forbidden love, sacred duty, and social injustice.
Ruiz, a beloved traveling priest in the shadows of the Andes Mountains, is able to connect with everyone through his patient faith and his love of art. A complex hero, he’s conflicted by his work and compelled to help others. Cajoled into serving communities across Peru, he observes disparities between harsh rural life and wealthy regions. In time, he grows disillusioned with Catholicism.
Ruiz also falls for Cori, the independent daughter of a plantation owner who would rather divide her family’s wealth among the peasants than live an easy life. Their values aligning, Ruiz and Cori become lifelong companions, circling each other but never settling down together. Instead, Ruiz finds solace creating people’s portraits using a specialized technique, while Cori joins a guerrilla force, hoping to help overthrow the Peruvian government.
Moving at a methodical pace, this intimate story focuses on Ruiz the most. He eschews the cloth for love, leading to new forms of tumult. He and Cori are sometimes aligned; at other times, Ruiz wants to lead a normal life with her and their children, while she is pulled toward revolution. Uncertainty is built around which of them is right: Cori and the guerrillas engage in brutal tactics, but they do so against a government whose corruption is undeniable.
Lyrical language is applied to developing the book’s settings and communities, as with Ruiz’s observation of “hands that wrung the chicken necks and bled the sheep, the hands that pulled everyone into the world and washed them before burial.” Ruiz’s bobbing and weaving artistic style becomes a powerful metaphor for his life: He is engaged in a tumultuous dance between duty and desire. The book is also driven forward by a persistent undercurrent of rebellion against fate, with Ruiz quarreling with his faith and Cori with the dictatorial government.
Rather than delivering a neat conclusion, the story remains true to its complexities, working toward a nuanced ending that involves faith, duty, and personal redemption. While the fate of the revolution and the country is left unclear, this ambiguity feels deliberate. Instead, the ending focuses on Ruiz’s hopes—and on the mysterious group headed toward him.
A tale of moral and existential complexity, Ruiz is a poetic historical novel in which a man is torn between his faith and his passions.
Reviewed by
John M. Murray
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