Author Description

Product Description When community leaders began to doubt Abel Mendoza, the law practice he had spent years building began to crumble. It was the 1960s and there was but a handful of Mexican lawyers in California. Abel had worked tirelessly to earn respect in the courts, avoiding any semblance of a personal life to achieve his goals. Now, his personal and professional lives had collided and he found himself being rejected by the community that had previously supported and admired him. His fears of inadequacy kindled, Abel began to question who he really was, what he did, and where he belonged. A desire to avoid these questions and the people who had provoked them sent this small-town lawyer on a trip to escape not only his community but his own self-doubts, and into a relationship that changed his life completely. Review Rating: 5 stars Lost and Found is a very insightful examination of race relations in the USA. Although Abel is a fictional character, Ruiz's ability to bring him to life on the page decisively places him in a situation that will be bitterly familiar to many people today. The portrayal of his expulsion from the community he so desperately wanted to be part of was masterful because of its lack of explosiveness...a brilliant examination of the experience of a person of color wanting to be treated with the same respect as his white peers and the reflection of where that desire comes from. -K.C. Finn for Readers' Favorite Rating: 4 stars I loved the storyline and its focus on societal conditioning, construction, and limiting mental prisons. It showed how such terrible racism affects the mind, both in negative and positive senses....Ruiz is a talented storyteller who created balanced and realistic scenes within his story. I loved reading this beautiful novel. -Jennifer Ibiam for Readers' Favorite Rating: 5 stars Suspenseful. Intriguing. Genius. Words o