2023 Honorable Mention, Isis Duarte Book Prize, Haiti/ Dominican Republic section (LASA) 2023 Winner, Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Book Award, Caribbean Studies Association An innovative study of the artistic representations of undocumented migration within the Hispanophone Caribbean Debates over the undocumented migration of Latin Americans invariably focus on the southern US border, but most migrants never cross that arbitrary line. Instead, many travel, via water, among the Caribbean islands. The first study to examine literary and artistic representations of undocumented migration within the Hispanophone Caribbean, Crossing Waters relates a journey that remains silenced and largely unknown. Analyzing works by novelists, short-story writers, poets, and visual artists replete with references to drowning and echoes of the Middle Passage, Marisel Moreno shines a spotlight on the plight that these migrants face. In some cases, Puerto Rico takes on a new role as a stepping-stone to the continental United States and the society migrants will join there. Meanwhile the land border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, the only terrestrial border in the Hispanophone Caribbean, emerges as a complex space within this cartography of borders. And while the Border Patrol occupies US headlines, the Coast Guard occupies the nightmares of refugees. An untold story filled with beauty, possibility, and sorrow, Crossing Waters encourages us to rethink the geography and experience of undocumented migration and the role that the Caribbean archipelago plays as a border zone.

Over the past ten years, more than 4,000 people have died while crossing the Arizona desert to find jobs, join families, or start new lives. Other migrants tell of the corpses they pass—bodies that are never recovered or counted. Crossing With the Virgin collects stories heard from migrants about these treacherous treks—firsthand accounts told to volunteers for the Samaritans, a humanitarian group that seeks to prevent such unnecessary deaths by providing these travelers with medical aid, water, and food. Other books have dealt with border crossing; this is the first to share stories of immigrant suffering at its worst told by migrants encountered on desert trails. The Samaritans write about their encounters to show what takes place on a daily basis along the border: confrontations with Border Patrol agents at checkpoints reminiscent of wartime; children who die in their parents’ desperate bid to reunite families; migrants terrorized by bandits; and hovering ghost-like above nearly every crossing, the ever-present threat of death. These thirty-nine stories are about the migrants, but they also tell how each individual author became involved with this work. As such, they offer not only a window into the migrants’ plight but also a look at the challenges faced by volunteers in sometimes compromising situations—and at their own humanizing process. Crossing With the Virgin raises important questions about underlying assumptions and basic operations of border enforcement, helping readers see past political positions to view migrants as human beings. It will touch your heart as surely as it reassures you that there are people who still care about their fellow man.

Former small-town sheriff Cork O’Connor leads a desperate search-and-rescue mission into the unforgiving Minnesota wilderness in this “gritty, bloody adventure” (Publishers Weekly) from critically acclaimed author William Kent Krueger’s award-winning mystery series. The Quetico-Superior Wilderness: more than two million acres of forest, white-water rapids, and uncharted islands on the Canadian/American border. Somewhere in the heart of this unforgiving territory, a young woman named Shiloh—a country-western singer at the height of her fame—has disappeared. Her father arrives in Aurora, Minnesota, to hire Cork O’Connor to find his daughter. Cork joins a search party that includes an ex-con, two FBI agents, and a ten-year-old boy. Others are on Shiloh’s trail as well—men hired not just to find her, but to kill her. As the expedition ventures deeper into the wilderness, strangers descend on Aurora, threatening to spill blood on the town’s snowy streets. Meanwhile, out on the Boundary Waters, winter falls hard. Cork’s team of searchers loses contact with civilization, and like the brutal winds of a Minnesota blizzard, death—violent and sudden—stalks them.

Crossing Boundaries: Ethnicity, Race, and National Belonging in a Transnational World explores ethnic and racial nationalism within a transnational and transcultural framework in the long twentieth century (late nineteenth to early twenty-first century). The contributors to this volume examine how national solidarity and identity—with their vast array of ideological, political, intellectual, social, and ethno-racial qualities—crossed juridical, territorial, and cultural boundaries to become transnational; how they altered the ethnic and racial visions of nation-states throughout the twentieth century; and how they ultimately influenced conceptions of national belonging across the globe. Human beings live in an increasingly interconnected, transnational, global world. National economies are linked worldwide, information can be transmitted around the world in seconds, and borders are more transparent and fluid. In this process of transnational expansion, the very definition of what constitutes a nation and nationalism in many parts of the world has been expanded to include individuals from different countries, and, more importantly, members of ethno-racial communities. But crossing boundaries is not a new phenomenon. In fact, transnationalism has a long and sordid history that has not been fully appreciated. Scholars and laypeople interested in national development, ethnic nationalism, as well as world history will find Crossing Boundaries indispensable.

In this riveting, action-packed novel from award-winning author Will Hobbs, a teenage boy hoping to help his loved ones must fight for his life as he makes the dangerous journey across the Mexican border into the United States. When falling crop prices threaten his family with starvation, fifteen-year-old Victor Flores heads north in an attempt to "cross the wire" from Mexico into America so he can find work and help ease the finances at home. But with no coyote money to pay the smugglers who sneak illegal workers across the border, Victor struggles to survive as he jumps trains, stows away on trucks, and hikes grueling miles through the Arizona desert. Victor's passage is fraught with freezing cold, scorching heat, hunger, and dead ends. It's a gauntlet run by many attempting to cross the border, but few make it. Through Victor's desperate perseverance, Will Hobbs brings to life a story that is true for many, polarizing for some, but life-changing for all who read it. Acclaim for Crossing the Wire includes the following: New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age, Junior Library Guild Selection, Americas Awards Commended Title, Heartland Award, Southwest Book Award, and Notable Books for Global Society.

Since its establishment as a federally protected wilderness in 1964, the Boundary Waters has become one of our nation's most valuable--and most frequently visited--natural treasures. When Amy and Dave Freeman learned of toxic mining proposed within the area's watershed, they decided to take action--by spending a year in the wilderness, and sharing their experience through video, photos, and blogs with an audience of hundreds of thousands of concerned citizens. This book tells thedeeper story of their adventure in northern Minnesota: of loons whistling under a moonrise, of ice booming as it forms and cracks, of a moose and her calf swimming across a misty lake. With the magic--and urgent--message that has rallied an international audience to the campaign to save the Boundary Waters, A Year in the Wilderness is a rousing cry of witness activism, and a stunning tribute to this singularly beautiful region.

The basis for the major motion picture The Drowning from the Booker Prize–winning author of The Regeneration Trilogy and The Silence of the Girls. Out walking with his wife, Lauren, beside the River Tyne, Tom Seymour instinctively risks his life to save a young man who they happen to notice just before he jumps into the icy current. Tom’s spontaneous act saves the life of someone whose past, as well as his future, he feels a sense of responsibility towards. Recently released from prison, and living under an assumed name, Danny Miller was tried for murder as a ten-year-old on the basis of Tom’s testimony, and assessment of him as a psychologist and an expert witness. When Danny asks Tom to help him sort out his life—beginning with his past—Tom is drawn into a lonely, soul-searching reinvestigation of the child murderer’s case. “Exhilarating moral exploration, and prose as naked and jolting as an unwrapped live wire.” —Richard Eder, The New York Times Book Review “It’s her canny feel for the psyche’s ambiguous meanderings, more than plot twists, that generates most of the thrills . . . This author creates an atmosphere of menace worthy of a Joyce Carol Oates.” —Dan Cryer, Newsday “Barker soars to new heights with this harrowing, contemporary study of fate tainted by the stench of evil.” —Robert Allen Papinchak, USA Today “Barker creates a sense of menace worthy of Ian McEwan . . . Border Crossing is replete with sharp, expressive exchanges, hard poetry, and as many enigmas as implacable truths.” —Kerry Field, The Atlantic Monthly

"In Crossing Boundaries, Wolf shares his journeys to Ethiopia, Borneo Madagascar, Syria, and Myanmar. Each voyage is represented by exquisite photographs paired with personal, often humorous travel narratives. The author is a keen observer, captivated especially by individual forms of expression: the colors and patterns of clothing, the forms and features of architecture. Once home, Wolf incorporates - both subtly and not so subtly - the influence of his travels into his refined interior spaces in striking color combinations (the pinks and fuchsias and lavenders of Myanmar); skillful assemblages of artifacts (Ethiopian horn cups and chieftain's chairs); and graceful formal compositions (the symmetry of a Syrian garden court)."--BOOK JACKET.