THE MAN WHO WOULD BE GOD. STORIES BY PAUL RUFFIN. Southern Methodist University Press Southwest Life and Letters Series.

In this debut collection Paul Ruffin renders the details and textures of place in such a way that a world, whole and new, is evoked, vividly transporting readers to a setting they will recognize even if they've never been there before. Having planted readers' feet firmly in a tangible place, Ruffin urges readers to lift their feet and step again, and often that second step is a lulu. Readers may find themselves in a new dimension where the certainties of reality have been abandoned. These eleven stories probe the mythic possibilities of ordinary landscapes and daily events.
In "The Beast Within" a couple whose tire has a blowout on a little-traveled road spend a nightmarish night under the watchful eye of an armed and dangerous old woman and her dog; in "The Fox" a long-suppressed misery erupts in a startling denouement as a farmer's wife listens to her husband talk about a fox caught in a coon trap; in "Lamar Loper's First Case" a neophyte public attorney, delivering a restraining order to an abusive husband, uses more than his law school training to handle a volatile situation; and in the title story a wealthy West Texas rancher, wishing to extend the dimensions of his sovereignty, dons white robes and demands a peculiar kind of fealty from the Mexican peons he has invited to live on his land.
Ruffin's stories are accessible, direct, and deceptively simple. His men and women, endowed with richly textured sensibilities, compel the reader's attention, demand empathy, and endure.

Paul Ruffin teaches English at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas.