Synopses & Reviews
It is Americas killing field, and the deaths keep mounting. As the political debate has intensified and demonstrators have taken to the streets, more and more illegal border-crossers die trying to cross the desert on their way to what they hope will be a better life.
The Arizona border is the deadliest immigrant trail in America today. For the strong and the lucky, the trail ends at a pick-up on an Interstate highway. For far too many others, it ends terribly—too often violently—not far from where they began.
Dead in Their Tracks is a first hand account of the perils associated with crossing the desert on foot. John Annerino recounts his experience making that trek with four illegal immigrants—and his return trips to document the struggles of those who persist in this treacherous journey. In this spellbinding narrative, he takes readers into the “empty quarter” of the Southwest to meet the migrant workers and drug runners, the ranchers and Border Patrol agents, who populate todays headlines.
Other writers have documented the deaths; few have invited readers to share the experience as Annerino does. His feel for the land and his knowledge of surviving in the wilderness combine to make his account every bit as harrowing as it is for the people who risk it every day, and in increasing numbers.
Each book includes an recognizing an immigrant, refugee, border agent, local, or humanitarian who has died in America's borderlands."
The desert may seem changeless, but there are more bodies now, and Annerino has revised his original text to record some of the compelling stories that have come to light since the books first publication and has updated the photographs and written a new introduction and afterword. Dead in Their Tracks is now more timely than ever—and essential reading for the ongoing debate over illegal immigration.
For information on First Serial Rights, Book Club, Film, Television, and Options, visit the Author's Web site.
Review
“Annerino conveys the struggle of migrants who cross the U.S.-Mexico border with compassion because he had the courage to make the journey himself. A gripping work of investigative reporting.” —National Geographic Adventure“Annerinos evocative words and haunting pictures make the issue impossible to ignore.” —People magazine
Synopsis
Alarmed by breaking news reports of thirteen men, women, and children who died of thirst on American soil--and twenty-two other human beings saved by Border Patrol rescue teams--John Annerino left the cool pines of his mountain retreat and journeyed into one of the most inhospitable places on earth, the heart of the 4,100-square-mile "empty quarter" that straddles the desolate corner of southwest Arizona and northwest Sonora, Mexico.
During the Sonoran Desert's glorious and brutal summer season Annerino, a photojournalist, author, and explorer, watched four border crossers step off a bus and nonchalantly head into the American no-man's land. On assignment for Newsweek, Annerino did more than just watch on that blistering August day. He joined them on their ultramarathon, life-or-death quest to find work to feed their families, amid temperatures so hot your parched throat burns from breathing and drinking water is the ultimate treasure.
As their water dwindled and the heat punished them, Annerino and the desperate men continued marching fifty miles in twenty-four hours and managed to survive their harrowing journey across the deadliest migrant trail in North America, El Camino del Diablo, "The Road of the Devil." Driven by the mounting death toll, John returned again and again to the sun-scorched despoblado (uninhabited lands)--where hidden bighorn sheep water tanks glowed like diamonds--to document the lives, struggles, and heartbreaking remains of those who continue to disappear and perish in a region that's claimed the lives of more than 9,700 men, women, and children.
Following the historic paths of indigenous Hia Ced O'odham (People of the Sand), Spanish missionary explorer Padre Eusebio Francisco Kino, and California-bound Forty-Niners, Annerino's journeys on foot, crisscrossed the alluring yet treacherous desert trails of the El Camino del Diablo, Hohokam shell trail, and O'odham salt trails where hundreds of gambusinos (Mexican miners) and Euro-American pioneers succumbed during the 1850s.
As the migrants kept coming, the deaths kept mounting, and Annerino kept returning. He crossed celebrated Sonoran Desert sanctuaries--Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, Barry M. Goldwater Range, sacred ancestral lands of the Tohono O'odham--that had become lost horizons, killing grounds, graveyards, and deadly smuggling corridors that also claimed the lives of National Park rangers and Border Patrol agents. John Annerino's mission was to save someone, anyone, everyone--when he could find them.
Dead in Their Tracks is the saga of a merciless despoblado in the Great Southwest, of desperate yet hopeful migrants and refugees who keep staggering north. It is the story of ranchers, locals, and Border Patrol trackers who've saved countless lives, and heavily armed smugglers who haunt an inhospitable, if beautiful, wilderness that remains off the radar for journalists and news organizations that dare not set foot in the American desert waiting to welcome them on its terms.
About the Author
Author and photographer John Annerino has been documenting the natural beauty, indigenous peoples, and political upheaval of the American West and Mexican borderlands for two decades. A contract photo-journalist for the New York and Paris-based photo agencies Liaison International and Time Inc.s TimePix, he is the author of 26 books and 23 single-artist calendars.
Annerino has worked and consulted on the U.S.-Mexico border for many news, documentary, and feature film projects including ABC Primetime, CNN, PBS, Life Magazine, Newsweek, Time, and National Geographic Adventure.