Francisco Cantú

NAMED A TOP 10 BOOK OF 2018 BY NPR and THE WASHINGTON POST WINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE IN CURRENT INTEREST FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE NONFICTION AWARD The instant New York Times bestseller, "A must-read for anyone who thinks 'build a wall' is the answer to anything." --Esquire For Francisco Cantú, 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. Driven to understand the hard realities of the landscape he loves, Cantú joins the Border Patrol. He and his partners 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. Plagued by a growing awareness of his complicity in a dehumanizing enterprise, he abandons the Patrol for civilian life. But when an immigrant friend travels to Mexico to visit his dying mother and does not return, Cantú discovers that the border has migrated with him, and now he must know the full extent of the violence it wreaks, on both sides of the line.

Dispatches from the Border

The Line Becomes a River

An electrifying memoir from a Mexican-American US Border Patrol guard. ‘Stunningly good... The best thing I’ve read for ages’ James Rebanks, author of The Shepherd’s Life Francisco Cantú was a US Border Patrol agent from 2008 to 2012. In this extraordinary account, he describes his work in the desert along the Mexican border. He tracks humans through blistering days and frigid nights. He detains the exhausted and hauls in the dead. The line he is sworn to defend, however, begins to dissolve. Haunted by nightmares, Cantú abandons the Patrol for civilian life – but he soon faces a final confrontation with the world he believed he had escaped. ‘A raw, compelling memoir... An eloquent rebuke to all those who look to build walls rather than bridges between people’ Sunday Times ‘A must-read... A page-turning personal story that holds until the final page and wrenches long after’ GQ ‘Remarkable... Lyrical and moving’ Guardian

The Line Becomes A River

THE NEW YORK TIMESBESTSELLER'Stunningly good. Beautiful, smart, raw, sad, poetic and humane... It?s the best thing I?ve read for ages', James Rebanks, author of THE SHEPHERD'S LIFEHow does a line in the sand become a barrier that people will risk everything to cross?Francisco Canto was a US Border Patrol agent from 2008 to 2012. He worked the desert along the Mexican border, at the remote crossroads of drug routes and smuggling corridors, tracking humans through blistering days and frigid nights across a vast terrain. He detains the exhausted and the parched. He hauls in the dead. He tries not to think where the stories go from there.He is descended from Mexican immigrants, so the border is in his blood. But the line he is sworn to defend is dissolving. Haunted by nightmares, he abandons the Patrol for civilian life. And when an immigrant friend is caught on the wrong side of the border, Canto faces a final confrontation with a world he believed he had escaped.The Line Becomes a Riveris timely and electrifying. It brings to life this landscape of sprawling borderlands and the countless people who risk their lives to cross it. Yet it takes us beyond one person?s experience to reveal truths about life on either side of an arbitrary line, wherever it is.

The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border

Line Becomes a River

Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing 2019, an electrifying memoir from a Mexican-American US Border Patrol guard 'Stunningly good... The best thing I've read for ages' James Rebanks, author of The Shepherd's Life Francisco Canto was a US Border Patrol agent from 2008 to 2012. In this extraordinary account, he describes his work in the desert along the Mexican border. He tracks humans through blistering days and frigid nights. He detains the exhausted and hauls in the dead. The line he is sworn to defend, however, begins to dissolve. Haunted by nightmares, Canto abandons the Patrol for civilian life - but he soon faces a final confrontation with the world he believed he had escaped. 'A raw, compellingmemoir... An eloquent rebuke to all those who look to build walls rather than bridges between people' Sunday Times 'A must-read... A page-turning personal storythat holds until the final page and wrenches long after' GQ 'Remarkable... Lyrical and moving' Guardian

Francisco Cantú

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