The Devil’s Highway–A true story brilliantly told

This is a book I would not have chosen to read and in fact the first few pages confirmed my fear it would be a depressing book about a depressing subject.  I was wrong.  The book had been chosen by my book group so I had to persist.  Soon the book became surprisingly compelling even though the gruesome end was never in doubt.  The author brilliantly tells the true story of a group of men who died (or nearly died) in the Arizona desert in May 2001. 

Luis Alberto Urrea  does so by revealing  meaningful details about all the people in this tragic event.  He displays the diverse backgrounds of the Mexicans crossing the border—giving a visceral understanding or where they were actually and metaphorically coming from.  The book might have stopped there with an emotional story of their pain and suffering and their appalling ignorance of the desert (many of the men had come from the lush wet tropics and had no idea of the importance of simple things like wearing a hat or not wearing black pants).  But, to his credit, the author goes beyond that and presents background on all the players: the border patrol, the local residents who are plagued by problems resulting from people walking across the border, and  the others involved in this dangerous and expensive activity. In sometimes poetic phrases we learn about the desert, the heat, stages of death by heat and thirst.  The result is a realization of the true tragic quality of the illegal immigration problem.  Everyone involved in this story labored under misconceptions or gross ignorance that led to a terrible outcome. Worse, there seems no clear path toward stopping or even tamping down the problem.  All you can say after reading the book is you have a much better grasp of the issues facing the parties near the border.  That may not be enough, but it is something worthwhile.