--- product_id: 105143489 title: "The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border" price: "€ 38.07" currency: EUR in_stock: true reviews_count: 13 url: https://www.desertcart.fr/products/105143489-the-line-becomes-a-river-dispatches-from-the-border store_origin: FR region: France --- # The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border **Price:** € 38.07 **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border - **How much does it cost?** € 38.07 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.fr](https://www.desertcart.fr/products/105143489-the-line-becomes-a-river-dispatches-from-the-border) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description The instant New York Times bestseller, "A must-read for anyone who thinks 'build a wall' is the answer to anything." -- Esquire For Francisco Cantú, the border is in the blood: his mother, a park ranger and daughter of a Mexican immigrant, raised him in the scrublands of the Southwest. Haunted by the landscape of his youth, Cantú joins the Border Patrol. He and his partners are posted to remote regions crisscrossed by drug routes and smuggling corridors, where they learn to track other humans under blistering sun and through frigid nights. They haul in the dead and deliver to detention those they find alive. Cantú tries not to think where the stories go from there. Plagued by nightmares, he abandons the Patrol for civilian life. But when an immigrant friend travels to Mexico to visit his dying mother and does not return, Cantú discovers that the border has migrated with him, and now he must know the whole story. Searing and unforgettable, The Line Becomes a River goes behind the headlines, making urgent and personal the violence our border wreaks on both sides of the line Review: A fully engaging experience - I found my reading experience here to be both moving and valuable. The overall sense is that of one's good friend dealing with the difficulties and sorrows of adversity. You are there moment to moment and feel like you want to help. This book puts individual lives front and center in the controversial current discussion of issues on the border between Mexico and the United States. And you can feel the representative nature of these specific stories, they are not related to give extreme instances that might shock someone. Nothing extreme here. As others have detailed, the book is a story of one individual, but in 3 parts. The first part is his story as a border control employee of the US government. In the second part he has been promoted from on the ground work to more of a desk job that coordinates the work of others on the ground. The third part is when he's no longer doing this sort of work but finds himself witnessing and trying to help a family that is in the throes of being torn apart by the system of immigration control I found the first and third parts to be the most deeply engaging. I have highly recommended this book to my good friends. Review: Easy read, empathetic tale of people caught up in an impersonal system. An honest report by someone with his boots on the ground - I picked up this book because the subject is topical and my local news suggested it contained some politically controversial material. The only thing that makes this book controversial is the presently vocal anti-immigrant hysteria of the American political Right. If the book had come out two years ago, no one would be declaring it controversial. An autobiographical story told in first person and covering a roughly 10 year period from the author's college graduation with a political science degree through and beyond his four year stint in the U.S. border patrol serving the south western United States. The author, being of Mexican heritage and raised in the South West, was drawn to the international border between the U.S. and Mexico, joining the border patrol to, as he put it, bring the theory he studied down to earth. There are a few flash backs to his earlier life, and some history of the border region, the 1860s war with Mexico that added the South West territories, Texas, and the southern half of California to the U.S. map, and also the impact of the Mexican Revolution of 1911. Much of the emotional conflict is revealed through dreams he had while serving on the border and later as his life never let him forget what he experienced. This is the story of a compassionate man in an in-compassionate job. He relates incidences of drug seizures, but notes that most of what he had to do was capture and return to Mexico people who wanted nothing more than to do some honest work and in many cases reunite with wives and in particular children born in the U.S. and so citizens. Many of these people die trying. Unlike a generation back, when crossing the border was relatively easy whether for work or criminal activity, it is now much more difficult and only the criminals have the resources to assure themselves of making the trip alive. The rest take their chances and thousands do not make it. The cruelty of criminal groups escorting migrants is on full display. People who cannot keep up in the many miles long trek across stony and water-less desert are simply left behind to die. The border patrol itself is complicit in some of these deaths destroying water and food, meant to sustain these people, where ever they find it. After four years the author cannot take more and quits the border patrol. The remainder of the book relates a friendship he develops with an undocumented Mexican immigrant who becomes trapped in the system, torn from his wife and children simply because he returns to Mexico to be with his dying mother and bury her. From there, he cannot get back and every attempt to do so traps him deeper and deeper in a system that cares nothing for compassionate people. This book is not political. Cantu avoids even mentioning much of politics, but merely reports what he experiences of an indifferent system and those trapped by it. He is most surely not opposed to interdicting drugs and deporting real criminals, but the vast majority of the migrant people involved are neither drug runners or criminals, but only criminalized by their desire to work and share a life with their spouses and children. If you are a compassionate person the book might bring you to tears. It is an honest report of the impact of an impersonal system on the lives of thousands of individuals who want nothing more than a life for themselves and their families. The political is mostly notable for its absence as the author tries, likely in vain for these times, to personalize these stories. There is nothing more controversial about it than that. ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | #52,550 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #7 in Immigration Policy #59 in Law Enforcement Biographies #62 in Emigrants & Immigrants Biographies | | Customer Reviews | 4.4 out of 5 stars 2,680 Reviews | ## Images ![The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81NFQiTHN4L.jpg) ## Available Options This product comes in different **Media Language, Media Format** options. ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A fully engaging experience *by W***M on January 14, 2019* I found my reading experience here to be both moving and valuable. The overall sense is that of one's good friend dealing with the difficulties and sorrows of adversity. You are there moment to moment and feel like you want to help. This book puts individual lives front and center in the controversial current discussion of issues on the border between Mexico and the United States. And you can feel the representative nature of these specific stories, they are not related to give extreme instances that might shock someone. Nothing extreme here. As others have detailed, the book is a story of one individual, but in 3 parts. The first part is his story as a border control employee of the US government. In the second part he has been promoted from on the ground work to more of a desk job that coordinates the work of others on the ground. The third part is when he's no longer doing this sort of work but finds himself witnessing and trying to help a family that is in the throes of being torn apart by the system of immigration control I found the first and third parts to be the most deeply engaging. I have highly recommended this book to my good friends. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Easy read, empathetic tale of people caught up in an impersonal system. An honest report by someone with his boots on the ground *by M***T on February 26, 2018* I picked up this book because the subject is topical and my local news suggested it contained some politically controversial material. The only thing that makes this book controversial is the presently vocal anti-immigrant hysteria of the American political Right. If the book had come out two years ago, no one would be declaring it controversial. An autobiographical story told in first person and covering a roughly 10 year period from the author's college graduation with a political science degree through and beyond his four year stint in the U.S. border patrol serving the south western United States. The author, being of Mexican heritage and raised in the South West, was drawn to the international border between the U.S. and Mexico, joining the border patrol to, as he put it, bring the theory he studied down to earth. There are a few flash backs to his earlier life, and some history of the border region, the 1860s war with Mexico that added the South West territories, Texas, and the southern half of California to the U.S. map, and also the impact of the Mexican Revolution of 1911. Much of the emotional conflict is revealed through dreams he had while serving on the border and later as his life never let him forget what he experienced. This is the story of a compassionate man in an in-compassionate job. He relates incidences of drug seizures, but notes that most of what he had to do was capture and return to Mexico people who wanted nothing more than to do some honest work and in many cases reunite with wives and in particular children born in the U.S. and so citizens. Many of these people die trying. Unlike a generation back, when crossing the border was relatively easy whether for work or criminal activity, it is now much more difficult and only the criminals have the resources to assure themselves of making the trip alive. The rest take their chances and thousands do not make it. The cruelty of criminal groups escorting migrants is on full display. People who cannot keep up in the many miles long trek across stony and water-less desert are simply left behind to die. The border patrol itself is complicit in some of these deaths destroying water and food, meant to sustain these people, where ever they find it. After four years the author cannot take more and quits the border patrol. The remainder of the book relates a friendship he develops with an undocumented Mexican immigrant who becomes trapped in the system, torn from his wife and children simply because he returns to Mexico to be with his dying mother and bury her. From there, he cannot get back and every attempt to do so traps him deeper and deeper in a system that cares nothing for compassionate people. This book is not political. Cantu avoids even mentioning much of politics, but merely reports what he experiences of an indifferent system and those trapped by it. He is most surely not opposed to interdicting drugs and deporting real criminals, but the vast majority of the migrant people involved are neither drug runners or criminals, but only criminalized by their desire to work and share a life with their spouses and children. If you are a compassionate person the book might bring you to tears. It is an honest report of the impact of an impersonal system on the lives of thousands of individuals who want nothing more than a life for themselves and their families. The political is mostly notable for its absence as the author tries, likely in vain for these times, to personalize these stories. There is nothing more controversial about it than that. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Haunting stories about survival, the desert, and how hope is often the only thing keeping us alive. *by I***S on November 26, 2019* The author is a solid writer and I appreciate how he weaves together his own thoughts, conversations, feelings, and dreams; narratives from those he meets and befriends; history; and ideas and writings from worldly scholars. I also appreciate how the book, implicitly, forces you to think about how horrible things must be in someone's home country for them to embark on the life-threatening journey to the U.S. This is something that is usually missing from any discourse on immigration – a thorough examination of the historical "push" factors forcing Mexicans and Central Americans to leave their homelands. One contributing push factor includes the many corporations that abandoned production plants and factories in Mexico in the 1990s and fled to Asia, where manufacturing was cheaper. Although many of these plants were sweatshops, they still offered employment. Drug cartels have filled that void, and as a result, people have absolutely nowhere to turn, nowhere to work. Their one and only choice is to risk their lives trying to get into the U.S. As a result, the most vulnerable people – migrants – are in the crossfires; they are scapegoats for everything that is going wrong along the southern border; as if they had any power. Finally, the author has skillfully reminded us of the humanity in each and every soul. His ability to withhold judgment and criticism is at the core of this. He simply writes about his experiences and concedes to his own naiveté and his emotional struggles. --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.fr/products/105143489-the-line-becomes-a-river-dispatches-from-the-border](https://www.desertcart.fr/products/105143489-the-line-becomes-a-river-dispatches-from-the-border) --- *Product available on Desertcart France* *Store origin: FR* *Last updated: 2026-11-07*