So Far From God

Novelist Philip Caputo (Acts of Faith, A Rumor of War) skillfully interweaves the post-9/11 reality of drug cartels and immigrant hordes with the early 20th-century world of the Mexican-U.S. border in a multigenerational tale. The lives of a grieving widower, an illegal Mexican alien, and various narcotraficantes--as well as the hordes who give this story, Crossers (Knopf), its name--interact to form the best story set in this volatile landscape that I have read since I chanced to discover Don Winslow's great novel, The Power of the Dog. The border has its own culture and taxonomy, and Caputo's novel displays that in its manifold forms--along with a serviceable plot and sympathetic characters. And beyond the border of his recent fiction Caputo has logged some serious investigative time to write a compelling complement to Crossers that cautions: "The stakes for the U.S. are high, especially as the prospect of a failed state on our southern border begins to seem all too real." In the piece he spotlights a pandemic of slaughter that has claimed 14,000 lives amidst a struggle between drug lords, police, the army, politicians, and C.I.A.-sponsored operatives, and he asserts: