Product Details

Publishers Weekly

This first title in the Vintage Departures series (``devoted to exploring the vastness of the world, of one's life, or even of one's own backyard'') focuses on the world of illegal aliens. Conover, author of Rolling Nowhere, posed as an immigrant, crossing the border twice and learning first-hand about ``coyotes''those who sneak Mexicans and other Latin Americans across the border, often under murderous conditions. Menaced by hoods, arrested, freed, forced to dodge spotter planes, Conover spent a year, as he puts it, ``working, drinking, smoking, driving, sleeping, sweating and shivering with Mexicans.'' His conclusion: ``It is urgent that we know more about these people who ask little more than to wash our dishes, vacuum our cars, and pick our fruit.'' This well-written, anecdotal account offers an intimate glimpse of the United States from a perspective few citizens are aware of. (September)

Library Journal

Conover, author of an earlier book on hobos, studies Mexican illegal aliens by living their life and crossing the border with them. His book is similar to John Davidson's The Long Journey North ( LJ 10/15/79), but Conover takes dangerous personal risks, spends more time with his contacts, covers a larger group of Mexicans, and ranges across Idaho, Arizona, and Florida as he describes how these people migrate within the United States. His experiences in central Mexico effectively capture the immigrant's impact on his own rural community, although one wishes for deeper personal insights into his subjects' motivations. An eminently readable and revealing account. Highly recommended. Roderic A. Camp, Latin American Studies Dept., Central Coll., Pella, Ia .

School Library Journal

YA The title refers to the name given to those people who smuggle illegal aliens into the United States. Conover lived among the people who pay ``coyotes'' enormous sums of money to be brought into this country secretly under condi tions that are full of physical threat. The most touching part of the book is the description of Conover's visit to Ahua catlan, the province from which many of the men he has met come. Here he wit nesses what has happened to the families left behind. While the money the men have earned has resulted in some im provement, there is still enormous pov erty in their lives, and their home life is drifting toward disintegration. There is humor, too, including a hilarious episode in which several men pool enough mon ey together to fly from Mexico to Los Angeles but must find the appropriate clothing and behaviors to avoid arousing suspicions by ``La Migra.'' Conover has done a good job of capturing the difficult lives of these men who want only to earn a decent wage to support their fami lies. Barbara Weathers, Duchesne Academy, Houston