Excerpt from El Paso by Jazmine Ulloa, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

After lingering for a few moments more, I decided to go see my grandmother Alicia and another one of my aunts, also Alicia, in the Lower Valley. I drove all the way south to the Border Highway, which runs along the Rio Grande. When I was young, the road had been flanked by chain-link fences, but pushes to increase immigration enforcement under both Republican and Democratic administrations over the decades had brought more border patrol vans, federal officers, and rusty, corrugated metal bars that reached high into the air. I went east, all the way to a quiet neighborhood near the border wall, where mesquite trees and wide, open yards are set against irrigation canals. The Alicias live there five houses apart on the same stretch of a curving street. My aunt and I embraced and spoke in low voices, like the passengers on the plane.

Excerpted from El Paso by Jazmine Ulloa. Copyright © 2026 by Jazmine Ulloa. Excerpted by permission of Dutton. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.