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The Devil's Highway: A True Story (Paperback)

by Luis Alberto Urrea (Author) "Five men stumbled out of the mountain pass so sunstruck they didn't know their own names, couldn't remember where they'd come from, had forgotten how..." (more)

4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)

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Product Details

Paperback: 272 pages
Publisher: Back Bay Books (Sep 19 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0316010804
ISBN-13: 978-0316010801
Product Dimensions: 20.3 x 13.7 x 2 cm
Shipping Weight: 409 g

Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)

Amazon.ca Sales Rank: #134,958 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
Popular in these categories:
#13 in Books > Nonfiction > Social Sciences > Special Groups > Hispanic American Studies
#86 in Books > Nonfiction > Social Sciences > Emigration & Immigration

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Product Description

From Publishers Weekly

In May 2001, 26 Mexican men scrambled across the border and into an area of the Arizona desert known as the Devil's Highway. Only 12 made it safely across. American Book Awardâ€"winning writer and poet Urrea (Across the Wire; Six Kinds of Sky; etc.), who was born in Tijuana and now lives outside Chicago, tracks the paths those men took from their home state of Veracruz all the way norte. Their enemies were many: the U.S. Border Patrol ("La Migra"); gung-ho gringo vigilantes bent on taking the law into their own hands; the Mexican Federales; rattlesnakes; severe hypothermia and the remorseless sun, a "110 degree nightmare" that dried their bodies and pounded their brains. In artful yet uncomplicated prose, Urrea captivatingly tells how a dozen men squeezed by to safety, and how 14 othersâ€"whom the media labeled the Yuma 14â€"did not. But while many point to the group's smugglers (known as coyotes) as the prime villains of the tragedy, Urrea unloads on, in the words of one Mexican consul, "the politics of stupidity that rules both sides of the border." Mexican and U.S. border policy is backward, Urrea finds, and it does little to stem the flow of immigrants. Since the policy results in Mexicans making the crossing in increasingly forbidding areas, it contributes to the conditions that kill those who attempt it. Confident and full of righteous rage, Urrea's story is a well-crafted mÃ©lange of first-person testimony, geographic history, cultural and economic analysis, poetry and an indictment of immigration policy. It may not directly influence the forces behind the U.S.'s southern border travesties, but it does give names and identities to the faceless and maligned "wetbacks" and "pollos," and highlights the brutality and unsustainable nature of the many walls separating the two countries. Maps not seen by PW.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

So many illegal immigrants die in the desert Southwest of the U.S. that only notorious catastrophes make headlines. Urrea reconstructs one such incident in the Sonoran Desert, the ordeal of sun and thirst of two dozen men in May 2001, half of whom suffered excruciating deaths. They came from Vera Cruz; their so-called guide came from Guadalajara. Jesus Lopez Ramos was no master of orienteering, however, just an expendable bottom-feeder in the border's human-smuggling racket. Tracing their lives and the routes to the border, Urrea adopts a slangy, surreal style in which the desert landscape shimmers and distorts, while in desiccated border settlements criminals, officials, and vigilantes patrol for human cargo such as the men from Vera Cruz. The imaginative license Urrea takes, paralleling the laconic facts of the case that he incorporates into his narrative, produces a powerful, almost diabolical impression of the disaster and the exploitative conditions at the border. Urrea shows immigration policy on the human level. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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First Sentence
Five men stumbled out of the mountain pass so sunstruck they didn't know their own names, couldn't remember where they'd come from, had forgotten how long they'd been lost. Read the first page

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Customer Reviews

11 Reviews

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4.7 out of 5 stars (11 customer reviews)

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2.0 out of 5 stars Interesting story, poorly written, Jul 18 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: The Devil's Highway: A True Story (Hardcover)

This story of the Yuma 14 had the potential to be one helluva of a story, as it does read as though it is fictitious. The fact that it's true is the driving force behind the story, only to be marred by the author's sloppy and at time irreverent writing style. He uses repetition of words and phrases in extremis, and he for some reason feels compelled to stick one-liners at the close of all his sections. The material is interesting enough without the reader having to be bludgeoned by tongue-in-cheek punchline passages. It really got annoying and detracted from the larger story of struggle.

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5.0 out of 5 stars A must read, Jun 7 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: The Devil's Highway: A True Story (Hardcover)

I just want to add my voice in recommending this book. As others have said, Urrea writes like a lyricists and masterfuly alternates plain exposition with poetry to tell us the saga of 26 (more or less, nobody is sure of the exact number) men who made their way from Mexico in search of work and found death and disolation instead. The book indeed reads like a novel, a pageturner (I read it in about a day, I couldn't put it down), but it never allows you to forget that it is a real story, that those people dying in the sun are human beings, and that others - whose names and faces we'll never know - are following in their steps and dying their own desert deaths.

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5.0 out of 5 stars "They did not have enough items to fill a carry-on bag", May 31 2004

By	Sebastian Fernandez (Tampa, Florida United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Devil's Highway: A True Story (Hardcover)

Urrea delivers a moving novel based on the true story of the Yuma 14, fourteen Mexicans (from a group of 26) that tried to cross the border and enter the US illegally through the Arizona desert and succumbed in the attempt. The author presents the facts efficiently and his conclusion follows: Mexicans trying to cross the border are human beings like everyone else that had the bad fortune of facing tough economic condition; they should be respected.

The author describes the conditions and historic events that lead to the beginning of the illegal immigration into the US and draws a clear parallelism with our times, when there are several tasks in the US that Americans are reluctant to do, thus illegal immigrants are needed for this. When price changes in international markets adversely affected the Mexican economy and overpopulation became a problem, some Mexicans decided to come to the US. They ended up with a comfortable life, so when others found out, a growing interest in crossing the border developed.

Organizations of coyotes were formed to provide supply for the growing demand, and the poor people seeking a better future became just a means to an end. These individuals in their attempts have to fight against the heat of the desert, thirst, exhaustion, "la migra" (Border Patrol) and the coyotes themselves. On top of this, the control at the border has intensified throughout the last years, so the groups seeking a new future have to go through more dangerous paths each time. In the case of the twenty-six Mexicans that are the center of this story, the point of entry was the Devil's Highway, a deadly desert in Arizona that has claimed numerous victims through the years.

Urrea shows his outstanding knowledge of the topic in question and uses this in his descriptions with no holes barred. One of the most shocking passages of the book was the explanation of the different stages of death by heat, which go from Heat Stress to Heat Stroke. The realism and brutality of this account left me absolutely breathless. Overall, the quality of the novel is outstanding and even though it is a tough read at some points, in the end it is extremely satisfying and enlightening.

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Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Magnifico!
Amazing book! I couldn't put it down and read it from cover to cover in one day. Urrea has a gift for language and he applies it here. Read more

Published on May 25 2004 by Denise M. Caramagno

5.0 out of 5 stars Crackerjack writing
This is a factual book that reads like a novel. Once you start, you will not be able to sleep or eat or-- well, you may have to take a break for some essentials-- but you will... Read more

Published on May 17 2004 by GMF

5.0 out of 5 stars Just go get it NOW!!!!!!!
I never, ever read non-fiction but got interested in this book from a blurb in a magazine. It is life-altering, mind changing, perhaps life saving. Read more

Published on May 12 2004 by Snappy

5.0 out of 5 stars The Devil's Highway
One reviewer described author's Luis Alberto Urrea's style in this book as "...controlled, righteous rage".

This is an apt description. Read more