Rulfo's first book was a collection of short stories published in 1953. This brief first novel, set in a primitive Mexican village, records a young man's search for his father whom he never knew. After his mother's death, Juan, at her request, comes to his father's village of Media Luna -- a haunted, deserted village now, full of echoes of the dead. Through strangers who are only ghosts of the past he learns of Pedro Paramo's life of dominating feudal power and a consuming love which was finally the destruction both of himself and his people. Weaving in and out of Juan's dreams --or an existence which seems dreamlike, the characters surrounding his father tell their brooding tales until, suffocated by the voices of the dead, Juan concludes that he himself is dead. Steeped in intimations, wispy inconclusiveness, this excursion into the ephemeral remains restricted to the avant garde.