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. Driven to understand the hard realities of the landscape he loves, Cantú joins the Border Patrol. He and his partners 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. Plagued by a growing awareness of his complicity in a dehumanizing enterprise, 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 full extent of the violence it wreaks, on both sides of the line.

Hemingway Writer-In-Resident Francisco Cantú joins us to discuss his book, The Line Becomes A River: Dispatches From the Border, which was named a Top 10 Book of 2018 by NPR and The Washington Post, was winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Current Interest, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Nonfiction Award.

Two special guests will also join Cantú to discuss their organizations' work in our community. Alejandra Hernandez is Executive Director at Unity Alliance of Southern Idaho, a Twin Falls-based nonprofit that promotes understanding of the value of all immigrants and their contributions to the region’s competitive economy, workforce, and communities. Luis Campos is an attorney with The Alliance of Idaho, a Wood River Valley-based nonprofit working to protect the human rights of immigrants and their families and building safe, just, and welcoming communities for all. Campos represents clients across the U.S. and globally in all areas of U.S. immigration law, international human rights law, and related compliance law for organizations working with foreign nationals and/or in foreign jurisdictions. 

A book signing with Iconoclast Books will follow. This program will be livestreamed and available to view later on Vimeo. Click here to watch online.