The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border (Large Print / Library Binding)

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The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border By Francisco Cantu Cover Image

The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border (Large Print / Library Binding)

$47.24


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February 2018 Indie Next List


“Cantu personalizes the U.S.-Mexican border and all of its complexity in a way I've never seen. His writing is beautiful, with haunting and detailed descriptions of the desert, the immigrants, the cartels, and his own fears about violence and identity confusion. The criminalization of searching for a better life and the dehumanization of the process is looked at from several angles, and his journalistic approach does not make judgments, but clearly tells the facts. A great new writer to follow.”
— Pat Marsello, Bookworks, Albuquerque, NM

Summer 2019 Reading Group Indie Next List


“In a personal search for the purpose and meaning behind the U.S.-Mexico border, Cantúreflects on his childhood rooted in the Southwest, his mother’s immigration from Mexico, his scholarly studies, and others’ stories about the border. He seeks work as a border patrol agent, thinking his language skills and cultural sensitivity will be of value, but his intense curiosity about life at the border becomes a harsh reality that haunts his dreams. A lifesaver in America’s shallow rivers of rhetoric, Cantúenlightens readers on the endless American story of sacrifice and immigration with sharp insight and subtle lyricism.”
— Lisa Newman, Lemuria Bookstore, Jackson, MS

Staff Reviews


A beautifully written and deeply engaging book about the U.S./Mexico border told from the perspective of a former border patrol agent. To better understand the border and his relation to it, Francisco Cantu becomes a border patrol agent and recounts his experiences in the remote areas of the desert. Cantu approaches this hot topic thoroughly with curiosity and compassion, laying out the complexities of the issue and what it means for those living on both sides of the line.

— Anastasia

"A must-read for anyone who thinks "build a wall" is the answer to anything." --Esquire

For Francisco Cant , the border is in the blood: his mother, a park ranger and daughter of a Mexican immigrant, raised him in the scrublands of the Southwest. Haunted by the landscape of his youth, Cant joins the Border Patrol. He and his partners are posted to remote regions crisscrossed by drug routes and smuggling corridors, where they learn to track other humans under blistering sun and through frigid nights. They haul in the dead and deliver to detention those they find alive. Cant tries not to think where the stories go from there.

Plagued by nightmares, he abandons the Patrol for civilian life. But when an immigrant friend travels to Mexico to visit his dying mother and does not return, Cant discovers that the border has migrated with him, and now he must know the whole story. Searing and unforgettable, The Line Becomes a River goes behind the headlines, making urgent and personal the violence our border wreaks on both sides of the line.
Product Details ISBN: 9781432852320
ISBN-10: 1432852329
Large Print: Yes
Publisher: Thorndike Press Large Print
Publication Date: July 11th, 2018
Pages: 330
Language: English