Crossers

When Gil Castle loses his wife, he retreats to his family's sprawling homestead out west, a forsaken part of the country where drug lords have more power than police. Here Castle begins to rebuild his life, even as he uncovers some dark truths about his fearsome grandfather.

When a Mexican illegal shows up at the ranch, terrified after 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 that we never truly escape our history. Spanning three generations of an Arizona family, Crossers is a blistering novel about the brutality and beauty of life on the border.

Where Caputo does succeed, and beautifully, is in portraying the conflicting feelings any thoughtful American has about illegal immigration. The San Ignacio ranch and its adjoining allotments constitute a rugged, wild stretch of the Old West, and the Anglo family who work it and consider it home would like to keep it more or less as it was.

Author Biography

Philip Caputo was raised in the suburbs of Chicago. After serving with the Marines in Vietnam, he spent nine years as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, including five years as a foreign correspondent, and shared a Pulitzer Prize in 1972 for his reporting on election fraud in Chicago. In 1975 he was wounded in Beirut and during his convalescence completed the manuscript for A Rumor of War, his much acclaimed memoir about his service in Vietnam.

In 1977 he left the paper and turned to writing books and magazine articles full time. He is the author of seven works of fiction including Exiles, The Voyage and Acts of Faith, two memoirs, and four works of non-fiction. In addition, he has been a contributing editor for the New York Times Magazine, Esquire, National Geographic, and several other publications. He divides his time between Connecticut and Arizona. His new novel Crossers will be published by Knopf in October, 2009.

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