The Devil's Highway: A True Story (utgåvan 2004)

Southern Arizona is an unforgiving territory but ask those in the know. The people of Veracruz would say Mexico is even more so. The risk of traversing southern Arizona's blazing desert is worth it if it means getting out of a dead-end life in a violent country. As Natalie Merchant sings in 'San Andreas Fault,' "Go west. Paradise is there. You'll have all that you can eat of milk and honey over there...it's rags to riches over there." The trick is to survive the journey. Enemies abound. Double-crossing smugglers. Keen-eyed border patrol. Camouflaged poisonous snakes. Lightning fast scorpions. None of these can hold a candle to the dangers of desert's unrelenting heat. In May the temperature never dips below ninety degrees. In the daytime the sun gets so hot human bodies dry out and brains begin to boil. Through barely controlled rage, as if gritting his teeth, Urrea tells the harrowing story of twenty-six men who, in May of 2001, risk everything to make it to points north. The Devil's Highway (or Path), as this stretch of southern Arizona desert is known, is notorious for being so dangerous even Border Patrol stays clear. Other reviews of Urrea's book state that twelve of the twenty-six succeeded in making it to safety. I have an issue with this. To say that twelve made it to safety implies that they succeeded in arriving at their various U.S. destinations. They succeeding in disappearing into the fabric of nameless and faceless working-class communities across the country. Instead, they survived the desert, were nursed back to health and only to be regarded as witnesses for a criminal trial against their coyote and ultimately sent back to Mexico. There is more but I will leave it at that. ( )

An excellent book & well narrated by the author.

Urrea does a great job providing a human face to many of the different sides to the complex issue of people smuggling across the U.S. - Mexico border. ( )

An entertaining and sad story about why and how immigrants cross the US/Mexico Border. Some of them risk their lives by crossing one of the driest and hottest desert in North America. This is a story about a specific group who tried. Many of them died. ( )

This is a nonfiction work by novelist Luis Alberto Urrea which in an investigative report of border crossing of the Yuma 14 and border crossing in general. I can highly recommend this book as a fair and non biased report of border crossing. I've read Galeano's Memory of Fire which really points the political manipulation. Urrea also tells us about the politics. He fairly points out the humanness of the crossers, he points out the humanity of the border patrol. Politics is not humane, it is manipulations. We should not get our opinions from political sources. This book should be mandatory read before a person forms any opinion. ( )

A well researched, well written, thoroughly compelling book. ( )