SEPTEMBER 2021: While Crossing the Arizona Line...

I got a book contract!

I was on the Border Patrol road, bumping and bouncing my way from Sasabe toward Nogales, Arizona, with members of the Tucson Samaritans. The odious, 30-foot, boondoggle wall was on my right. We drove through the part of the mountainous desert landscape that Trump & Co had dynamited and leveled, even though it was not a place where safety seekers would normally attempt to pass. We traveled with a truck full of 99-cent jugs of water in the event we encountered people stuck on the other side and dying from dehydration, which we did.

We were counting all the gaps in the border wall — places where its makers left it unfinished or where it had been cut through by its challengers. We were up to 28 holes when we went through a rare bubble in cellular reception and my Gmail notifications pinged. I opened the app on my phone and this is what I found:

This is an important book, and a compelling submission. It’s one of those manuscripts we read that makes us feel proud to do the work we do… The story is relevant and will continue to be. it documents something that’s far from over as this country continues to struggle with what to do with and about immigration. We appreciate your angle on this — how can we profess to be such a great country when we treat people this way?

It’s very eye-opening, and equally important, it puts down stakes on an issue that we all need to be invested in. We are delighted to offer you a publishing contract. We’re excited about the prospect of working with you. —She Writes Press

I had been interviewing borderlanders and publishing their stories in Medium as a 2020 Vote-Blue GOTV effort since my first trip to the Tex-Mex border in January 2020. Candidate Biden seemed good on the issue of immigration. I believed he would be. But the betrayal of his campaign promises began shortly after Inauguration Day 2017. At that point, I knew too much. I’d seen too much. I wanted to share. I prepared a book proposal and sent it to She Writes Press in July, just days before a third journey across the line, this time zig-zagging from Big Bend, Texas, to Ajo, Arizona, back to the Rio Grande Valley, and then to San Diego.

A long-time follower of Brooke Warner, She Writes Press was my first choice of publisher. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect to get the green light on the first pitch, and such an enthusiastic one, too!

While the project began in January 2020, when I first bore witness to our national cruelty and could never look away again, the sprint to the finish line began in earnest then. I had a deadline: Election Year 2024.