When Gil Castle loses his wife in the Twin Tower attacks, he retreats to his family's sprawling homestead in a remote corner of the Southwest. Consumed by grief, he has to find a way to live with his loss in this strange, forsaken part of the country, where drug lords have more power than police and violence is a constant presence. But it is also a world of vast open spaces, where Castle begins to rebuild his belief in the potential for happiness—until he starts to uncover the dark truths about his fearsome grandfather, a legacy that has been tightly shrouded in mystery in the years since the old man's death.
When Miguel Espinoza shows up at the ranch, terrified after two friends were murdered in a border-crossing drug deal gone bad, Castle agrees to take him in. Yet his act of generosity sets off a flood of violence and vengeance, a fierce reminder of the fact that while he may be able to reinvent himself, he may never escape his history.
Searingly dramatic, bold and timely, Crossers is Philip Caputo's most ambitious and brilliantly realized novel yet.
Multiple plot lines twist and intertwine throughout Crossers. The central protagonist, Gil Castle, is healing from his wife's death by creating a new life for himself on the family homestead. Author Philip Caputo contrasts the thoughtful Gil with his cousin Blaine Erskine, a lifelong rancher who seems to channel the Old West of a bygone era. Their ranch on the Mexican border is a thoroughfare for drug runners and illegal aliens. Erskine runs afoul of one of the major drug lords, who is also involved in a bloody turf war with another kingpin. Throw in historical transcripts relating the life and times of Erskine's grandfather, Ben, as well as discussions of 9/11, terrorism, and the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and you've got one excessively complicated book. In the hands of a lesser novelist, the complexity could be confusing, with too much happening to follow. Caputo, however, manages to balance all the threads beautifully, merging them into a rich and satisfying tapestry. (Reviewed by Kim Kovacs).
The New York Times - William T. Vollmann
Caputo tells Ben's story with power and verisimilitude. His portrayal of the ranchers and their extended family also rings very true.
The Dallas Morning News - Dale L Walker
Crossers is at once a color-filled action tale; a generational saga with a moral; a touching love story; and a bold lesson in history and its inevitabilities.
Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. [G]orgeously stark…. Caputo’s west supersedes elemental cowboys and lone justice with the malaise of post-9/11 America and the violence of the Mexican desert – as gruesome as in Iraq – frothing with moral ambiguity and fraught with complicity.
Library Journal
Starred Review. Readers of Caputo's Acts of Faith will be hoping for the same measured, masterly storytelling, informed by sociopolitical concerns, and they won't be disappointed. Highly recommended.
Kirkus Reviews
Starred Review. A masterful tale about what comes of 'trying to escape history'—from which, the author gives us to understand, there is no safe place to hide.
Recent Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by Bill B from Peoria Superior Thriller! If all thrillers were this well written, with characters this well developed, I might read nothing else but thrillers. It seems to me that most "thrillers" do not thrill. They are often generically written and unintelligent, Not so... Read More
Illegal Drug Use in the USA The primary protagonist in Crossers is the head of a powerful Mexican
drug cartel specializing in the sale and distribution of both marijuana and
cocaine.
Illicit narcotics have been smuggled across the Mexican border into the United
States for decades, and the illegal drug market in the United States is one of
the most profitable in the world. According to
The US Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) approximately 70% of all foreign narcotics enter the
US via Mexico, most of it concealed in some of the 116 million vehicles that
cross the border annually. Smaller amounts are carried over in backpacks,
frequently by people paying back others for helping them enter the United States
illegally. The United States Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) estimates that
illegal drug sales in the country amount to between $13.6 and $48.4 billion
annually.
Originally, the major importers were Columbians who frequently contracted with
Mexican criminal organizations to handle transportation of the drugs into...
The first volume in the Border Trilogy - the tale of John Grady Cole, who at sixteen sets off for Mexico on a sometimes idyllic, sometimes comic journey to a place where dreams are paid for in blood.
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The New York Times - William T. Vollmann
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by Bill B from Peoria
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