Books › The Devil's Highway
The Devil's Highway
A True Story
272 pages
A harrowing, beautifully written descent into the unforgiving desert that exposes the human cost of a broken border.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like walking into a furnace. It is a propulsive, deeply harrowing experience that grips you by the throat and refuses to let go. The narrative moves with the relentless, ticking-clock tension of a thriller, yet it is steeped in a profound, sun-baked tragedy that lingers long after the final page. The prose is muscular and poetic, elevating a grim journalistic investigation into a mythic, almost biblical epic of human endurance and systemic failure. You are immersed in a desolate, unforgiving landscape where hope and desperation collide. It will captivate readers who gravitate toward immersive, empathetic narrative nonfiction that forces us to look unflinchingly at the human cost of the American Dream.
- Mood
- harrowing
- desolate
- sun-baked
- tense
- tragic
- Tone
- empathetic
- urgent
- unflinching
- poetic
- righteous
- Pace
- propulsive
- Themes
- human desperation · systemic failure · brutality of nature · the cost of the American Dream · borderland liminality
- The writing
- Lyrical and muscular, blending rigorous investigative journalism with the mythic, poetic cadence of a desert epic.
- The arc
- Begins with tense anticipation and desperate hope, descends into a grueling nightmare of survival, and resolves in profound, lingering sorrow.
- Who it's for
- Readers who appreciate deeply empathetic, immersive narrative nonfiction that tackles urgent social issues with literary grace.
Content notes
- death by exposure
- human trafficking
- graphic physical deterioration
- grief
- systemic racism
About the book
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."
Description from Open Library.
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