First published 2018
Francisco Cantú grows up in Arizona's desert, where his mother works as a park ranger and stories of border crossing run through his family history. He joins the US Border Patrol and finds himself stationed at remote crossroads where drug routes meet smuggling corridors. Under blazing sun and through freezing nights, Cantú tracks migrants through the desert. He pulls bodies from the wilderness when they die and delivers survivors to detention centers. The work follows him home in nightmares. Cantú leaves the Border Patrol and takes a job at a cafe, where he befriends Jose, a man who has lived in America for over thirty years. When Jose travels to Mexico to see his dying mother and fails to return, Cantú realizes the border has followed him into civilian life. He must now confront the full story of what happens to the people he once apprehended.
Genres: american, non-fiction, biography-memoir, 21st-century, current-affairs, american-history
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, personal-journey
Setting: Arizona, Mexico, United States
Period: 21st Century
250 pages · Hardcover · Riverhead Books
Content warnings: death, violence