Nothing has sparked more outrage, angst and political blowback than these three words: Build the wall. But beyond the rhetoric is real human drama, and often tragedy.
For writer Francisco Cantú, the grandson of a Mexican immigrant raised in the scrublands of the Southwest, the issue is deeply personal, and one he has experienced from both sides. As a Border Patrol agent, he crisscrossed remote drug routes and smuggling corridors tracking people between El Paso and Juárez. For four years he hauled in the corpses of those who did not survive, and deposited the living in detention centers, until questions and nightmares made it impossible for him to continue.
Once a civilian, Cantú finds himself navigating the other side of the issue when his immigrant friend, José, travels to Mexico to visit his dying mother and cannot return to the United States.
Cantú’s beautiful and brutal chronicle, The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border, his first book, is garnering high praise. He’s already received the prestigious 2017 Whiting Award in Nonfiction, a Pushcart Prize, and been featured on public radio’s This American Life.
Nothing has sparked more outrage, angst and political blowback than these three words: Build the wall. But beyond the rhetoric is real human drama, and often tragedy.
For writer Francisco Cantú, the grandson of a Mexican immigrant raised in the scrublands of the Southwest, the issue is deeply personal, and one he has experienced from both sides. As a Border Patrol agent, he crisscrossed remote drug routes and smuggling corridors tracking people between El Paso and Juárez. For four years he hauled in the corpses of those who did not survive, and deposited the living in detention centers, until questions and nightmares made it impossible for him to continue.
Once a civilian, Cantú finds himself navigating the other side of the issue when his immigrant friend, José, travels to Mexico to visit his dying mother and cannot return to the United States.
Cantú’s beautiful and brutal chronicle, The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border, his first book, is garnering high praise. He’s already received the prestigious 2017 Whiting Award in Nonfiction, a Pushcart Prize, and been featured on public radio’s This American Life.
Nothing has sparked more outrage, angst and political blowback than these three words: Build the wall. But beyond the rhetoric is real human drama, and often tragedy.
For writer Francisco Cantú, the grandson of a Mexican immigrant raised in the scrublands of the Southwest, the issue is deeply personal, and one he has experienced from both sides. As a Border Patrol agent, he crisscrossed remote drug routes and smuggling corridors tracking people between El Paso and Juárez. For four years he hauled in the corpses of those who did not survive, and deposited the living in detention centers, until questions and nightmares made it impossible for him to continue.
Once a civilian, Cantú finds himself navigating the other side of the issue when his immigrant friend, José, travels to Mexico to visit his dying mother and cannot return to the United States.
Cantú’s beautiful and brutal chronicle, The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border, his first book, is garnering high praise. He’s already received the prestigious 2017 Whiting Award in Nonfiction, a Pushcart Prize, and been featured on public radio’s This American Life.
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