The Devil's Highway: A True Story

The Devil's Highway: A True Story

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Editorial Reviews

The author of "Across the Wire" offers brilliant investigative reporting of what went wrong when, in May 2001, a group of 26 men attempted to cross the Mexican border into the desert of southern Arizona. Only 12 men came back out. "Superb . . . Nothing less than a saga on the scale of the Exodus and an ordeal as heartbreaking as the Passion . . . The book comes vividly alive with a richness of language and a mastery of narrative detail that only the most gifted of writers are able to achieve.--"Los Angeles Times Book Review."

Customer Reviews

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Reviewed by Showme, 2010-02-09

This is the story of the desert passage illegal immigrants make between Mexico and the U.S. Many die en route because of lack of water and the heat. More specifically, it is the story of the Yuma 14, when fourteen men from one group died in 2001.

There were parts of this book, especially at the end, where it was painful to read. Mr. Urrea described the final hours of the dead in vivid, personal detail. One description particularly stands out for its horrific sadness. A survivor reported: "One of the boys went crazy and started jumping up and down. He started screaming, 'Mama! Mama! I don't want to die!' He ran up to a big cactus and started smashing his face against it. I don't know what his name was." The boy was 16 years old.

About another who died, Mr. Urrea wrote: "Nobody knows the name of the man who took off all his clothes. It was madness, surely. He removed his slacks, folded them, and put them on the ground. Then he took off his underwear, laid it neatly on the pants. He removed his shirt and undershirt and squared them away with the pants. As if he didn't want to leave a mess. ...He lay on his back and stared into the sun until he died."

I like how Mr. Urrea spoke for the dead as they rode in their body bags in the air-conditioned hearses.

Mr. Urrea's description of the Border Patrol's activities seemed nuanced and even-handed to me. He offers thoughtful notes in the last chapter regarding the financial costs and benefits of illegal immigrants, of other violences perpetrated in and around the desert border.

It's difficult to describe Mr. Urrea's writing style other than to say it is personal, often in second person narrative. His portrayal of almost all of the players in the illegal immigrant universe is empathetic. Exceptions are the drug gangsters and the coyotes they run, plus certain aspects of the Mexican government machine.

Whatever one's position on illegal immigration, this book forces the reader to acknowledge the immigrants' humanity. At least for a day or two.

Incredible and Haunting

Reviewed by D. Ashal, 2010-02-07

Luis Urrea has written what may be the finest book about La Frontera in the present day. Though the events he writes about here took place a full decade ago, the book is still relevant and timely; the situation has deteriorated over the years, but the basic players are the same and the stupidity and horror remain largely unabated.

Urrea worked hard and uncovered the story of the Yuma 14; a band of illegals who came North to work and found themselves dying in the desert, the coyote who led them to their doom, and the border patrol and Mexican consular agents who were there to pick up the pieces. It's a horrific story, but Urrea doesn't look away and damned if I could either as he laid it out; he explores every salient detail from the hypocritical power and money wrangling of small and large border politics to the last hours of the doomed in the desert. It's not a feel good book, but it isn't macabre, either; the compassion Urrea feels is palpable, and the pessimism is a necessary byproduct. Urrea also surprised me with his incredibly scrupulous look at the US Border Patrol; he did not saint them, but showed them (accurately, in my experience) as hardworking, often despised men who in most cases, regardless of their personal politics, care about human life. I knew Urrea was an excellent writer from The Hummingbird's Daughter, Lake of Sleeping Children, and Across the Wire, but I didn't realize just how stringent his own journalistic ethics and ability to dive into a story were.

The book's storytelling is nothing to scoff at in its own right; I think that in the hands of a lesser writer, the book would be just too grim to get through. Urrea masterfully recounts the history of this stretch of desert, the land and the people who have lived and (especially) died there, and the events in many human lives that came together one fateful month in 2000. It's a blend of biography, true crime, history, sociology, political reporting, and storytelling in the service of understanding a horrific event largely forgotten in the wake of 9/11.

I have two minor problems with the book, neither of which seems sufficient to ding it one star. I find Urrea's mysticism sort of irritating and out of place in this book. I've been in the vacant lot on Speedway, more than once, there's no demon there, just a lot of weeds and the occasional crackpipe. Similarly, crucifixes don't "work" in those forsaken stretches of desert because they don't "work" anywhere in the sense he means. Also, I think the book could have used one or two fewer digressions into other stories.

I don't rate things at 5 stars very often. I truly believe this is one of the best books I've read for understanding the border, of for that matter the modern Southwest. If this even sounds vaguely interesting to you, I urge you to pick this up and read it at the earliest opportunity.

The Devil's Highway

Reviewed by manning g. warren 111, 2010-01-31

The story humanely chronicles the true story of a group's fatal search for a better life, ending in the Arizona desert. While describing the stages of hyperthermia in awesome detail, providing a survival guide for desert hikers, it also provides a profound understanding of the complex relationship between emigrants and the border patrol. The journey proves not to have been made in vain but with the development of vital safeguards to prevent tragic recurrences. The book offers a highly commendable entry point into the immigration debate in the Americas.

No Angels or A**holes in this book--just human beings

Reviewed by carolbee1, 2009-11-20

Ahhh, such a good book!!! Full disclosure though, in my work I serve low income clients, a large percentage of whom are immigrants and refugees. This of course includes people who crossed the Southern Border illegally. Now when one of my clients exclaims, "I almost died when I crossed the border," I have a much clearer understanding of what he/she means.

The narrative style of Urrea is entertaining and the details of the story itself kept me from wanting to put the book down. I cried. I worried over father and son. I had nightmares after one night's read. The aspect that I most appreciated, however, was the fact the Urrea made no one a complete a**hole or complete angel (well, maybe Rita Vargas was complete Angel). Everyone was a multi-faceted human being. The people crossing the border are simply trying to make a life for their families. The border patrol agents are simply doing their jobs trying to protect the border. Sometimes they can be jerks (the root of the word "tonk") and sometimes they can be heroes (the rescue effort described in great detail would make any American proud).

Everyone should read this book; it could help temper prejudices on all sides.

A stirring story

Reviewed by American Immigration Council's Community Education Center, 2009-10-06

The Devil's Highway is a stirring story of twenty-six men who crossed the Mexican border into the harsh Devil's Highway of Southern Arizona. Through Urrea's in-depth investigative work, the reader is able to enter into the deadly, desolate region where only twelve men were able to make it out alive after being abandoned by their coyotes. Urrea's work is a well-crafted combination of interviews and rst-person testimony, history, culture, and immigration policy. The Devil's Highway was a nalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for general nonction. This is an excellent book for use in a high school classroom and would allow students an opportunity to closely examine illegal immigration.