The Devil's Highway

''The dead...are stretched in angular poses, caught in last gasps or shouts, their eyes burned an eerie red by the sun...like wax-and-paper torsos in a gas station Dungeon of Terror.'' Not for the faint of heart, Highway is a riveting account of the 2001 border crossing of 26 Mexican men into the stretch of Arizona desert commonly called the Devil's Highway -- a nod to its ghastly history of rotting corpses and scorching conditions. Urrea's exhaustive research and incisive analysis provide searing sociopolitical context, while his poetic prose viscerally captures the group's horror at being abandoned by their guide and the ritualistic death march that claimed 14 lives.