Synopses & Reviews
From a Pulitzer Prize finalist, the single most compelling, lucid, and lyrical contemporary account of the absurdity of U.S. border policy (The Atlantic).
In May 2001, a group of men attempted to cross the Mexican border into the desert of southern Arizona, through the deadliest region of the continent, the Devil's Highway. Three years later, Luis Alberto Urrea wrote about what happened to them. The result was a national bestseller, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, a book of the year in multiple newspapers, and a work proclaimed as a modern American classic.
Review
“A powerful, almost diabolical impression of the disaster and the exploitative conditions of the border. Urrea shows immigration policy on the human level.” Booklist
Review
“Confident and full of righteous rage, Urrea's story is a well-crafted melange of first-person testimony, geographic history, cultural and economic analysis, poetry and an indictment of immigration policy.” Publishers Weekly
Review
“The single most compelling, lucid, and lyrical contemporary account of the absurdity of U.S. border policy.” The Atlantic
About the Author
A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his landmark work of nonficiton The Devil's Highway, Luis Alberto Urrea is also the bestselling author of the novels The Hummingbird's Daughter, Into the Beautiful North, and Queen of America, as well as the story collection The Water Museum, a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist.
He has won the Lannan Literary Award, an Edgar Award, and a 2017 American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, among many other honors. Born in Tijuana to a Mexican father and American mother, he lives outside of Chicago and teaches at the University of Illinois-Chicago.