Memoir

The Line Becomes a River by Francisco Cantú (The Bodley Head)

Between 2008 and 2014, Cantú, a third generation Mexican-American, worked as a US border patrol agent in the desert that separates Mexico and the US. His work was to track down migrants fleeing into the US and it marked him. This memoir, structured in three parts, is some sort of reckoning. The journals Cantú kept as an agent bear witness but paint the bigger picture too, citing the genocides of WWII as well as the PTSD endured by war veterans. The book’s final third, the story of his friend, José, brings home the humanity of a family ripped apart by the border in this powerful work that is essential reading in the Age of Trump.