The Line Becomes a River
Dispatches from the Border
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3.5 • 6 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
NAMED A TOP 10 BOOK OF 2018 BY NPR and THE WASHINGTON POST
WINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE IN CURRENT INTEREST
FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE NONFICTION AWARD
The instant New York Times bestseller, "A must-read for anyone who thinks 'build a wall' is the answer to anything." --Esquire
For Francisco Cantú, the border is in the blood: his mother, a park ranger and daughter of a Mexican immigrant, raised him in the scrublands of the Southwest. Driven to understand the hard realities of the landscape he loves, Cantú joins the Border Patrol. He and his partners learn to track other humans under blistering sun and through frigid nights. They haul in the dead and deliver to detention those they find alive. Plagued by a growing awareness of his complicity in a dehumanizing enterprise, he abandons the Patrol for civilian life. But when an immigrant friend travels to Mexico to visit his dying mother and does not return, Cantú discovers that the border has migrated with him, and now he must know the full extent of the violence it wreaks, on both sides of the line.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
The political conflict and human drama engulfing the U.S.-Mexico border are familiar to anyone who follows the news, but this extraordinary book explores the issues in a way that’s entirely fresh. Francisco Cantú studied the history of relations between the two countries before joining the Border Control to gain on-the-ground perspective on immigration policy and law enforcement. In gorgeously written vignettes, Cantú shares the startling, terrifying, and heartbreaking realities of the job and reflects on his own Mexican-American heritage and his passion for the harsh border landscapes. It’s hard to imagine anyone else being able to tell this story.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Cant narrates the stellar audio edition of his memoir about his time as a border-patrol agent in Arizona. He uses a manner that respectfully conveys the life-and-death struggles of the people he witnessed desperately trying to cross into the United States from Mexico. Cant , raised in the Southwest by a single mother of Mexican heritage, resists the temptation to go for obvious ethnic vocal characterizations or demonstrative displays, instead opting for an understated delivery to relate the details of spouses separated from one another, parents separated from children, and border crossers facing the elements. When advocating on behalf of a friend who is a detained undocumented immigrant, Cant speaks in tones that elicit understanding and empathy rather than pity. The passages recounting parent-child visitation at a detention center provide an especially memorable display of Cant 's narration style working in sync with his writing style. Cant first shared parts of this narrative on the radio show This American Life; his excellent audiobook will appeal to fans of that show and of first-person nonfiction storytelling in general. A Riverhead hardcover.
