Ruffin publishes memoir

Barnesville native and Herald Gazette columnist Mike Ruffin has published a new book.Michael Ruffin was born and raised in the small town of Barnesville, Georgia.He had a good life. He had good parents. His environment was safe and secure. But a sense of foreboding always accompanied him. He was always aware of his mortality. He was often assaulted by fears that he or his parents would die.So, when his parents did die’”his mother when she was fifty-three and he was sixteen, his father when he was fifty-seven and he was twenty’”it heightened his awareness and hardened his fears.Fifty-Seven: A Memoir of Death and Life is Ruffin’s account of his life-long struggle to come to terms with mortality. It honestly confronts the issues he faced as he tried to live in the face of death. A Christian and a minister, Ruffin deals with how his faith both hindered and helped him. Simultaneously heartbreaking and humorous, Fifty-Seven recounts Ruffin’s ongoing journey toward realizing and embracing the permanent while loving and letting go of the temporary. At its heart, it is the story of one person’s struggle to be human.Michael Ruffin is a writer, editor, and preacher. He and his wife Debra live on the Ruffin Family Farm in Yatesville, Georgia. Fifty-Seven: A Memoir of Death and Life is available in print and Kindle editions at http://www.amazon.com