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tommyhousworth's review against another edition
5.0
From Veracruz to certain death, 26 Mexican men try to find their way to a new life in America. Fourteen of them - dubbed "The Yuma 14" - never made it. This is their story of hope, suffering and - for some - survival.
No matter what you believe politically about immigration - and make no mistake, these are 26 men trying to enter the U.S. illegally - this story is heartbreaking, beautifully told, and written with such an attention to experiential detail that I loved it for the language as much as for the compelling approach to the story.
It's brutal, it's populated with characters both noble and heartless, and it's told so well, I ordered a copy from Amazon to have, highlight, and read again - the DeKalb library wanted their copy back after six weeks, apparently.
This is a terrific - and horrific - book, and I want to read Urrea's "Across the Wire" next to learn more. What T.C. Boyle's "Tortilla Curtain" covered as a piece of fiction, and Bruce Springsteen captured on "Matamoros Banks" and "Across the Border" musically, Urrea captures here - and then some.
No matter what you believe politically about immigration - and make no mistake, these are 26 men trying to enter the U.S. illegally - this story is heartbreaking, beautifully told, and written with such an attention to experiential detail that I loved it for the language as much as for the compelling approach to the story.
It's brutal, it's populated with characters both noble and heartless, and it's told so well, I ordered a copy from Amazon to have, highlight, and read again - the DeKalb library wanted their copy back after six weeks, apparently.
This is a terrific - and horrific - book, and I want to read Urrea's "Across the Wire" next to learn more. What T.C. Boyle's "Tortilla Curtain" covered as a piece of fiction, and Bruce Springsteen captured on "Matamoros Banks" and "Across the Border" musically, Urrea captures here - and then some.
ridgewaygirl's review against another edition
5.0
This book was published seven years ago and should be required reading today. It describes how undocumented workers get to the farms, motels, fast food restaurants and factories of the United States and why they undertake that perilous journey through the story of a typical group of men who attempted to cross the Arizona desert on foot. It's brilliantly and humanely written, showing everyone from the Border Patrol to the coyotes who guide the group so disastrously wrong in a critical, but compassionate way.
As the political rhetoric heats up here and we have successfully renamed the people who pick our oranges and cook our Big Macs illegal aliens, as though they were non-human and essentially evil, this book is more important than ever. While Urrea does have a bias toward compassion and understanding, he doesn't flinch from addressing the costs to everyone of the issue of workers crossing illegally to work in the north. He also illuminates both the reasons people would be driven to undertake an expensive and potentially deadly journey and the ways American immigration policy has created unforeseen consequences.
If every article or book written on this topic were as well-researched and free of hyperbole, I think the national debate on immigration would be both more reasonable and more productive.
As the political rhetoric heats up here and we have successfully renamed the people who pick our oranges and cook our Big Macs illegal aliens, as though they were non-human and essentially evil, this book is more important than ever. While Urrea does have a bias toward compassion and understanding, he doesn't flinch from addressing the costs to everyone of the issue of workers crossing illegally to work in the north. He also illuminates both the reasons people would be driven to undertake an expensive and potentially deadly journey and the ways American immigration policy has created unforeseen consequences.
If every article or book written on this topic were as well-researched and free of hyperbole, I think the national debate on immigration would be both more reasonable and more productive.
retiredlibrarylady's review against another edition
4.0
Very well-written books focusing on one group of walkers from Mexico with an inexperienced guide. Lost in the desert, 14 of them died. One quote particularly resonated with me : "No person on earth should ever be called illegal". Very timely as our country once again is trying to come to grips with immigration, although not so much with Mexican nationals.
annevoi's review against another edition
5.0
The Devil's Highway is a harrowing story about the "Yuma 14"—aka Wellton 26—a group of Mexican men who attempted, in May 2001, to cross the mountainous southern Arizona desert in the company of a guía with inadequate experience, to pursue opportunity in the US that was nonexistent at home. "Wellton 26" refers to the Border Patrol (BP) station that responded to a call of "bodies," maybe alive, maybe dead, in the desert, and the number of victims. "Yuma 14" refers to the BP sector in which they were found, and the ultimate number of dead.
The story begins with five men stumbling "out of the mountain pass so sunstruck they didn't know their own names, couldn't remember where they'd come from, had forgotten how long they'd been lost." The scene is fully, viscerally imagined and described: the ferociously shimmering heat; the men's black-burnt skin and lips, their hair hardened from dried sweat; their hallucinations, their desperation.
We then learn a bit about the history of the "white man" in this region, a bit about native myths, a bit about natural history—stories that come almost as welcome relief from the men's suffering.
And then another key player is introduced: the Border Patrol, in the form of an agent, "Mike F.," who finds these five wandering souls, and then learns that there are up to 21 more whose fate is unknown. Immediately, an all-out search & rescue operation is mounted.
The story told is experiential, sometimes slowing down to a walking pace as we follow the migrants (or as the BP calls them, "undocumented entrants") on their journey, one that starts out hopeful and ends up horrific. But it also delves deeply into structural components of this complicated drama that plays out every day along our southern border: the wants and needs and dreams of the walkers themselves; the convoluted society of the smugglers; the Border Patrol's dedication to their task. No one is a hero, or a villain, exactly. It is, unfortunately, just the way things go in a world out of balance.
As Luis explains in his 2014 afterword,
"When the research began, Jesús Lopez Ramos [the guide] was presented to me as the "bad guy." Soon his defenders made a strong case for the Border Patrol being the "bad guy." Law enforcement made a strong case for the smugglers being the "bad guys." And I knew that popular culture, as expressed in talk radio for example, considered the "illegals" the "bad guys." It was my field experience with [BP] supervisory agent Ken Smith that led to the epiphany. If I was going to write a book hoping to deal with the issue fairly, how could I write it with a prejudice toward Ken and his brothers in forest green? Once that key turned in the lock, the tone of the narrative opened for me. I have to trust my readers to make up their own minds. Even if that means reaching decisions I didn't intend for them to reach."
The writing is lyrical, full of sensuous detail. We are introduced to the desert itself as geography becomes a character in the story. And even before we get to the desert:
"They saw many wonders as they traveled north. In some of their ancient beliefs, north was the direction of death. North was the home of winter, and the underworld could be found there. They went from jungle to rain forest to pine forest, from pines to plains, and from plains to desert and volcanoes.
"They gawked at the worms of snow on the highest peaks. They stared at the pine trees, the roadside deer. The big cities were no more amazing than the dry lands they entered, the maguey and burros of the heartland, the cacti and plains of the north. The ones who knew geography told the others where they were—the states with the strange names: Zacatecas, Chihuahua. They passed through a hundred towns, a scattering of cities. They crossed little rivers, watched a thousand beaten cafés and gas stations whip by, burned out hulks of ancient car wrecks, white crosses erected along the highway where their ancestral travelers had perished. The whole way was a ghost road, haunted by tattered spirits left on the thirsty ground: drivers thrown out windows, revolutionaries hung from cottonwoods or shot before walls, murdered women tossed in the scrub. Into the Sierra Madre Occidental, the opposite side of their continent....
"Mexican towns full of Mexicans, so like them, yet so different from Veracruz."
Luis is a master of lists. There is an amazing section midway where he outlines in excrutiating detail the six stages of heat death. "They are the same for everyone. It doesn't matter what language you speak, or what color your skin. Whether you speed through these stages, or linger at each, hyperthermia will express itself in six ways": heat stress, heat fatigue, heat syncope, heat cramps, heat exhaustion, and heat stroke.
But most remarkable is the humanity in this book, something that is hardly surprising if you've read other books by Urrea, or heard him do a reading, or workshopped with him, or interact with him on Facebook. And so, one final passage; this takes place after Mendez, the guide, has left the group, ostensibly to find water and help:
"The day tormented them. Thirst. Pain. Men crawled under creosotes, under the scant shade of scraggly mesquites. It was a dull repetition of the entire walk. As rote as factory work. Their hours clanged by like machines. They were in the dirt like animals.
"Six o'clock in the morning took ten hours to become seven o'clock.
"A week later, it was eight o'clock.
"The temperature screamed into the nineties before nine o'clock.
"They waited. They couldn't even talk. They panted like dogs, groaned. Men put their hands to their chests, almost delicately, as if checking their own pulses. But they were barely awake. They were half in dreams and half in the day, and the day itself was a bad dream. Dry wings swished in the air around them. Voices, coughing. Far above, the ice silver chips of airplanes cut the blue. Out of reach."
It's an amazing book. And it reinforces a sense of the humanity that is trapped today at our border, in detention camps, and the inhumanity of our current administration, and, I would add, of the higher-up smugglers, sex traffickers, and drug lords on the Mexican side. I was heartened, though, not to emerge from this reading experience with a negative view of the Border Patrol. Theirs is a difficult job. They, too, are human beings. Sure, there are certainly bad eggs, as in any police force. But the ones that Urrea introduces us to seem like people I wouldn't mind knowing.
As for the Yuma 14: may they rest in peace. And their families not suffer. And I pray that the migrants currently incarcerated are soon, *soon*, able to find a better life. I do not understand how human can turn against human so easily. Maybe I'm naive. But I think we all deserve a decent shot at life. It doesn't last all that long, after all.
The story begins with five men stumbling "out of the mountain pass so sunstruck they didn't know their own names, couldn't remember where they'd come from, had forgotten how long they'd been lost." The scene is fully, viscerally imagined and described: the ferociously shimmering heat; the men's black-burnt skin and lips, their hair hardened from dried sweat; their hallucinations, their desperation.
We then learn a bit about the history of the "white man" in this region, a bit about native myths, a bit about natural history—stories that come almost as welcome relief from the men's suffering.
And then another key player is introduced: the Border Patrol, in the form of an agent, "Mike F.," who finds these five wandering souls, and then learns that there are up to 21 more whose fate is unknown. Immediately, an all-out search & rescue operation is mounted.
The story told is experiential, sometimes slowing down to a walking pace as we follow the migrants (or as the BP calls them, "undocumented entrants") on their journey, one that starts out hopeful and ends up horrific. But it also delves deeply into structural components of this complicated drama that plays out every day along our southern border: the wants and needs and dreams of the walkers themselves; the convoluted society of the smugglers; the Border Patrol's dedication to their task. No one is a hero, or a villain, exactly. It is, unfortunately, just the way things go in a world out of balance.
As Luis explains in his 2014 afterword,
"When the research began, Jesús Lopez Ramos [the guide] was presented to me as the "bad guy." Soon his defenders made a strong case for the Border Patrol being the "bad guy." Law enforcement made a strong case for the smugglers being the "bad guys." And I knew that popular culture, as expressed in talk radio for example, considered the "illegals" the "bad guys." It was my field experience with [BP] supervisory agent Ken Smith that led to the epiphany. If I was going to write a book hoping to deal with the issue fairly, how could I write it with a prejudice toward Ken and his brothers in forest green? Once that key turned in the lock, the tone of the narrative opened for me. I have to trust my readers to make up their own minds. Even if that means reaching decisions I didn't intend for them to reach."
The writing is lyrical, full of sensuous detail. We are introduced to the desert itself as geography becomes a character in the story. And even before we get to the desert:
"They saw many wonders as they traveled north. In some of their ancient beliefs, north was the direction of death. North was the home of winter, and the underworld could be found there. They went from jungle to rain forest to pine forest, from pines to plains, and from plains to desert and volcanoes.
"They gawked at the worms of snow on the highest peaks. They stared at the pine trees, the roadside deer. The big cities were no more amazing than the dry lands they entered, the maguey and burros of the heartland, the cacti and plains of the north. The ones who knew geography told the others where they were—the states with the strange names: Zacatecas, Chihuahua. They passed through a hundred towns, a scattering of cities. They crossed little rivers, watched a thousand beaten cafés and gas stations whip by, burned out hulks of ancient car wrecks, white crosses erected along the highway where their ancestral travelers had perished. The whole way was a ghost road, haunted by tattered spirits left on the thirsty ground: drivers thrown out windows, revolutionaries hung from cottonwoods or shot before walls, murdered women tossed in the scrub. Into the Sierra Madre Occidental, the opposite side of their continent....
"Mexican towns full of Mexicans, so like them, yet so different from Veracruz."
Luis is a master of lists. There is an amazing section midway where he outlines in excrutiating detail the six stages of heat death. "They are the same for everyone. It doesn't matter what language you speak, or what color your skin. Whether you speed through these stages, or linger at each, hyperthermia will express itself in six ways": heat stress, heat fatigue, heat syncope, heat cramps, heat exhaustion, and heat stroke.
But most remarkable is the humanity in this book, something that is hardly surprising if you've read other books by Urrea, or heard him do a reading, or workshopped with him, or interact with him on Facebook. And so, one final passage; this takes place after Mendez, the guide, has left the group, ostensibly to find water and help:
"The day tormented them. Thirst. Pain. Men crawled under creosotes, under the scant shade of scraggly mesquites. It was a dull repetition of the entire walk. As rote as factory work. Their hours clanged by like machines. They were in the dirt like animals.
"Six o'clock in the morning took ten hours to become seven o'clock.
"A week later, it was eight o'clock.
"The temperature screamed into the nineties before nine o'clock.
"They waited. They couldn't even talk. They panted like dogs, groaned. Men put their hands to their chests, almost delicately, as if checking their own pulses. But they were barely awake. They were half in dreams and half in the day, and the day itself was a bad dream. Dry wings swished in the air around them. Voices, coughing. Far above, the ice silver chips of airplanes cut the blue. Out of reach."
It's an amazing book. And it reinforces a sense of the humanity that is trapped today at our border, in detention camps, and the inhumanity of our current administration, and, I would add, of the higher-up smugglers, sex traffickers, and drug lords on the Mexican side. I was heartened, though, not to emerge from this reading experience with a negative view of the Border Patrol. Theirs is a difficult job. They, too, are human beings. Sure, there are certainly bad eggs, as in any police force. But the ones that Urrea introduces us to seem like people I wouldn't mind knowing.
As for the Yuma 14: may they rest in peace. And their families not suffer. And I pray that the migrants currently incarcerated are soon, *soon*, able to find a better life. I do not understand how human can turn against human so easily. Maybe I'm naive. But I think we all deserve a decent shot at life. It doesn't last all that long, after all.
nmbbell's review against another edition
Ran out of time (library) and will find on audio book
wahooemma's review against another edition
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.0
Very intense. Details the US MEX border and its social ecosystem
bobbo49's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.5
One of the most challenging books I've read in recent years: a deep, reporter's eye examination of the lives and deaths of a group of Mexican immigrants and their coyotes trying to cross the border in the 90-110 degree heat of the desert, and the context of their choice to make the attempt. Lots of horrifying details of the trauma and its aftermath, as well as the perspectives of all sides. Daunting.
mountainmija's review against another edition
4.0
So sad that this happens. It's inhumane. The book really let's you see what life is like for immigrants from our southern border.
matthewbrand's review against another edition
3.0
The author really gets across the hell that these people went through and how we've failed them. It's a solid story, but I just didn't care for how it was written. I had a hard time following the overall story with how much it jumped around.