Into the Beautiful North by Luis Alberto Urrea

This novel is a surprisingly light-heartened and humorous look at illegal immigration from Mexico to the US. The main character, Nayeli, decides that her town needs to bring back men who have left for the US to find work. She puts together a team including herself, two girlfriends and a gay café owner, Tacho, to cross the border and bring them back. She’s backed by her aunt, the first female mayor of their town, and helped by Atomiko, a young man they meet at a garbage dump in Tijuana.

Nayeli’s group pins their hopes on a missionary boy who had stayed in their village for a few months and a long ago boyfriend of Nayeli’s aunt, both of whom do end up helping. Nayeli and Tacho also undertake a cross-country trip to try and find Nayeli’s father in a small town in the Midwest. Their descriptions of Las Vegas, Estes Park and other places are fun to read.

“They skirted the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains without knowing the name of what they were seeing. Nayeli thought of it as the Sierra Madre. Tacho thought of it as the Mountains. They didn’t care for Boulder – too much traffic, too many skinny people jogging in ridiculous clothes. At Lyons, they turned up the mountains and again found themselves climbing, among vast spikes of pines, dark, nearly black. Bright pale granite upthrusts. Butterflies burst from the weeds beside the precipitous highway like little scraps of paper.”

It is not all happy times. They meet people who feel threatened by them, but they do make it to Iowa and then back to San Diego. Nayeli’s aunt, nicknamed la osa, joins them to recruit men to return to their village. The other characters in the story are also interesting, especially Nayeli’s companions Yoloxochitl (Yolo) and Veronica (Vampi).

Urrea has also written a non-fiction book about crossing from Mexico to the US called The Devil’s Highway. It is hard for me to believe the same person wrote both of these books. Although both are about border crossings, Into the Beautiful North is a much less depressing and more hopeful read. Urrea was here for The Nature of Words one year and reading this reminds me that event is coming up soon!

Border Songs by Jim Lynch

I vividly remember an experience I had at the US/Canadian border when I was in college. I was crossing back into the US with a couple friends. As the driver I was asked what town I was from. When I replied Mt. Vernon, the border person asked me who was the vice-principal at the high school and when I answered correctly waved me through. He didn’t seem to be concerned with who else was in the car or in seeing any identification at all. It was a kinder, gentler and possibly more naïve time.

Border Songs is set at today’s border near the Peace Arch in Washington State and British Columbia. A ditch is all that separates many parts of Canada from the US there, with neighbors being on one side of the ditch or the other. I hope this is exaggerated fiction as the amount of people crossing illegally to get into the US or to smuggle in pot seems insane.

In this novel Brandon Vanderkool is the newest border agent. He makes many busts right away. It is not because he is trying, but rather he watches for birds and can’t help but see the people or anomalous items around him. His dad, Norm, is a struggling dairy farmer whose wife is losing her memory. With his farm right on the border, Norm’s tempted with monetary offers to look the other way. One entertaining scene in the book takes place when Brandon is being shown all the new video cameras that have been placed along the border. One is pointed right at his dad’s farm and he witnesses some very strange behavior while trying to pay attention to his chief’s lecture.

Brandon does not relate well to people and much of this book is about him trying to figure out if a childhood friend, Madeline, is still a friend or not. Madeline, lives on the Canadian side of the border, and is becoming more and more involved in smuggling. It seems everyone on both sides is trying to get something across the border. Brandon even ends up arresting his sixth grade teacher. Border Songs is definitely a good read and I especially recommend it to anyone who lives near the border. I’d love to hear comments on what it is like to be living in Blaine or Lynden now.

Jim Lynch also wrote The Highest Tide, a young adult novel that focuses on a 13 year old boy growing up on the Puget Sound. I really enjoyed that book as well with its great descriptions of the sound and its marine life.

Escape to Books

The Devil's Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea

Luis Alberto Urrea is another writer coming to Bend for The Nature of Words. His book, The Devil’s Highway, was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize. It is the true story of a failed attempt by 26 men, referred to as the Wellton 26 in media coverage, to cross from Mexico into the United States in May 2001.

It is a story of the people who try to cross and those who try to stop them. The Border Patrol agents spend their days and nights looking for signs of crossing. “And the dark image of the evil Border Patrol agent dogs every signcutter who goes into the desert in his truck. It’s the tawdry legacy of the human hunt–ill will on all sides. Paranoia. Dread. Loathing. Mexican-American Border Patrol agents are feared even more by the illegals than the gringos, for the Mexicans can only ascribe to them a kind of rabid self-hatred. Still, when the walkers are dying, they pray to be found by the Boys in Green.”

I found this book tough to read. I guess I prefer my hardship tales to be fiction. Urrea includes a rather detailed description of the seven stages of dying of hyperthermia, or what is commonly known as heat stroke. This one short sentence really caught my attention: “In the desert, we are all illegal aliens.” The confusing jurisdiction over this desert area with Border Patrol, Customs, DEA, BLM, and INS as well as military and tribal lands thrown in, was overwhelming. In the end an amazingly poorly organized and badly led attempt to cross into the US ended in tragedy for many families. The author does a remarkable job at getting across the hopes of the men on this journey, and the descriptions of how they were found are distressing.

In this book Urrea mentions two other authors who are also going to be at The Nature of Words. From The Devil’s Highway:
“One writer who has focused on this desert, Craig Childs, tells of a pair of old bullet casings found out there. They were jammed together, and when pried apart, an aged curl of paper fell out. On the paper, someone had written, ‘Was it worth it?’”
“Fifteen hundred walkers a day depart from under the Sasabe sign. The writer Charles Bowden, on a visit to Sasabe in 2003, counted five thousand walkers in one afternoon.”

I would prefer to read more about the high desert near Bend, rather than this brutal desert with all its complications in Arizona.