The Devils Highway, Luis Alberto Urrea
The Devils Highway, Luis Alberto Urrea
12 Rating(s)
List: $27.99 | Sale: $19.59
Club: $13.99

The Devil's Highway
A True Story

Author: Luis Alberto Urrea

Narrator: Luis Alberto Urrea

Unabridged: 8 hr 53 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/01/2011

Synopsis

This important book from a Pulitzer Prize finalist follows the brutal journey a group of men take to cross the Mexican border: "the single most compelling, lucid, and lyrical contemporary account of the absurdity of U.S. border policy" (The Atlantic).

In May 2001, a group of men attempted to cross the Mexican border into the desert of southern Arizona, through the deadliest region of the continent, the "Devil's Highway." Three years later, Luis Alberto Urrea wrote about what happened to them. The result was a national bestseller, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, a "book of the year" in multiple newspapers, and a work proclaimed as a modern American classic.

About Luis Alberto Urrea

Luis Alberto Urrea is one of America's most critically acclaimed authors. His previous books include The Hummingbird's Daughter, The Devil's Highway, and Across the Wire. He has received a Lannan Literary Award, a Christopher Award, an American Book Award, and a Western States Book Award. Urrea lives with his family in Naperville, Illinois, where he is a professor of creative writing at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

Reviews

Goodreads review by brian on February 05, 2008

of all the books i've read on the subject, this is the best. the story itself is harrowing, of course, and urrea is one hell of a writer. rather than tell a linear story of the 26 mexicans who walked across the devil's highway (only 12 lived to tell the tale), he offers a kaleidoscopic view of the w......more

Goodreads review by D. on August 13, 2009

This a great book, one of the best I’ve read this year. It hits you in the head, makes you think hard about the events conveyed between its pages, but it packs an even harder emotional wallop. I felt such sadness and fierce heartache for the 26 men who stumbled into the Devil’s Highway and the bruta......more

Quotes

"The single most compelling, lucid, and lyrical contemporary account of the absurdity of U.S. border policy."—The Atlantic

"It makes what currently passes for our public debate over illegal immigration seem appallingly abstract and tin-eared. The Devil's Highway isn't just a great book, it's a necessary one."—Jeff Salamon, Austin American-Statesman

"Urrea's writing is wickedly good--outrage tempered with concern channeled into deft prose."—Kathleen Johnson, Kansas City Star

"Urrea writes about U.S.-Mexican border culture with a tragic and beautiful intimacy that has no equal."—Tom Montgomery Fate, Boston Globe

"One of the great surrealistic tragedies of the global age...Urrea has crafted an impassioned and poetic exploration of the dark side of globalization, where commodities flow free and people die in the desert."—Jefferson Cowie, Chicago Tribune

"In artful yet uncomplicated prose, Urrea captivatingly tells how a dozen men squeezed by to safety...Confident and full of righteous rage, Urrea's story is a well-crafted melange of first-person testimony, geographic history, cultural and economic analysis, poetry and an indictment of immigration policy."—Publishers Weekly

"A powerful, almost diabolical impression of the disaster and the exploitative conditions of the border. Urrea shows immigration policy on the human level."—Booklist

Add to Cart
Add to Wish List