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The Devil’s Highway
A True Story
Description
This important book from a Pulitzer Prize finalist follows the brutal journey a group of men take to cross the Mexican border: “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.
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.
Praise
"The single most compelling, lucid, and lyrical contemporary account of the absurdity of U.S. border policy."
—The Atlantic
"It makes what currently passes for our public debate over illegal immigration seem appallingly abstract and tin-eared. The Devil's Highway isn't just a great book, it's a necessary one."
—Jeff Salamon, Austin American-Statesman
"Urrea's writing is wickedly good--outrage tempered with concern channeled into deft prose."
—Kathleen Johnson, Kansas City Star
"Urrea writes about U.S.-Mexican border culture with a tragic and beautiful intimacy that has no equal."
—Tom Montgomery Fate, Boston Globe
"One of the great surrealistic tragedies of the global age...Urrea has crafted an impassioned and poetic exploration of the dark side of globalization, where commodities flow free and people die in the desert."
—Jefferson Cowie, Chicago Tribune
"In artful yet uncomplicated prose, Urrea captivatingly tells how a dozen men squeezed by to safety...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
"A powerful, almost diabolical impression of the disaster and the exploitative conditions of the border. Urrea shows immigration policy on the human level."
—Booklist
