The Devil’s Highway: A True Story
Written and Narrated By: Luis Alberto Urrea
Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
Brutal yet humane account; exquisitely written, exquisitely narrated
Only Luis Alberto Urrea could write this so well, the story of a large group of men from the nether reaches of Mexico setting out to the glory of America, searching for a better life for their own loved ones. They come off as less than illegal “entrants” and more human, and the Border Patrol, though politically incorrect with their humor at times, comes off less than jackbooted thugs, and more human and even heroic.
Urrea chronicles the men’s crossing in exquisite detail, monitoring their hopes and dreams, monitoring the physiology of their bodies as heat and dehydration start to get them. It’s a horror show and not soon to be forgotten. What horrible ways to die, and that’s the way more than 2,000 of them die every year (unless I heard that wrong, which is a possibility as I was a tad numb after some of the horrific stats).
While The Devil’s Highway is such a memorable book, there were some scenes that will stick with me forever. Namely, and this I’m trying to shake from my head, of a father who loses his son as he himself is succumbing to hyperthermia. He lays his son down, weeping, and then he staggers off into the brutal desert with its heat, its sun, and tears his money to shreds as he wanders. What use is money, ultimately, when what you really, really hold dearest to your heart is gone, taken in such an abhorrent way? The way Urrea writes it, it’s heartbreaking.
Urrea’s writing is out of this world—he can make the journey a jaunt to a forthcoming paradise filled with hope; he can make the desert a demon with a personality of its own. He writes the men with such pathos, be they the Walkers or be they Border Patrol. His choice of words, his use of sentence fragments, the punctuation made by the occasional profanity arising from utter frustration, utter exhaustion—a skill I can never hope to possess.
And his narration is stellar. I’ve listened to the other books he’s written, both fiction, and at the time I couldn’t believe how well he narrated, capturing characters and situations with just the right emotion. Here in The Devil’s Highway, he doesn’t capture characters but human beings, doesn’t capture situations so much as a complete trip into hell. He knows the nuances he meant his writing to convey, and he is flawless in his delivery.
The Devil’s Highway is an audiobook I shall definitely be recommending. It’s quietly passionate, lyrically told. Quite simply, it’s a masterpiece of investigative reporting.
Give it a try, and I promise you that you’ll be thinking differently about a lot of issues. This is neither a right nor a left book. It is, ultimately, a book of what it means to be human when the worst happens.
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