Be prepared to go on an epic journey crisscrossing time when you read Crossers. Caputo will seize you by the scruff of your psyche to take you back and forth from the New York of September 11th, 2001 to the wild west of the early 1900s. You will bounce from the dirty roads of rural Mexico to the tranquil streets of Connecticut. Characters from all walks of life will march across the page: ruthless drug lords and crusty wild west outlaws; graceful artists and desperate illegal aliens. At the center of the story is one man, Gil Castle. Consumed by grief after losing his wife in the 9/11 attacks, Gil retreats to his generations old family's ranch in a remote corner of southwest Arizona. There he joins his uncle and cousin and tries to rebuild his heart while mending fences, tending cattle, and fighting off mules and murderers. In this respite he thought he could escaped the senseless violence of the terror attacks, but when the present day ancestors of ancient ghosts come seeking revenge for something his grandfather had done, Gil realizes his own family's past has a dark and dangerous story to tell and he will pay the price. ( )

Was okay. Guy moves to a ranch near the Mexican boarder. Experiences the war on drugs firsthand. Story is somewhat boring. You expect more from Phillip Caputo. ( )

Great background, and plot. Characters not well drawn, but stereotypical. The key women were all sex objects first, then whatever they did second. Men, of course lusty, virile, overactive, see women as sex objects. ( )

The novelist [a:John Gardner|2945469|John Gardner|http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto/nophoto-M-50x66.jpg] put forth the notion that fiction should "evoke a vivid and continuous dream." In other words, it should immerse the reader in a world that feels alive, from the beginning of the book to the end. Creating this universe -- be it one that looks and feels like our own or a totally different time and place -- is the challenge of the novelist. I thought about this notion of the vivid and continuous dream while reading Philip Caputo's [b:Crossers|6593158|Crossers|Philip Caputo|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1255576175s/6593158.jpg|6786867]. I'd never read Caputo, never even heard of him, actually, until a family friend recommended him to me and loaned me his copy of the book. "This guy, he knew what was going on down there before anybody," my friend said. The "down there" he was speaking of is the Mexican border, and in that sense, I think he was right. The book follows Castle, a minor titan of Wall Street who loses his wife in the 9/11 terror attacks. Grief-stricken and broken, he decides to retire from his career in finance and retreat, literally, to the Arizona desert, taking up residence in an old cabin on the outskirts of his cousin's cattle ranch. There he discovers that the desert is a perilous place, overrun with undocumented immigrants making an often deadly dash across the arid landscape and lethal smugglers toting bales of marijuana on their backs. It's a world where minding your own business is a way of life, and riding into the wrong canyon can spell disaster.Castle's attempts to seclude himself are thwarted first by a comely female rancher, Tessa, and then by the inescapable blight of the drug trade, which finds its way into the business of his cousin Blaine's cattle ranch. Weaving the stories of several characters -- Castle, Blaine, their grandfather Ben Erskine (The last of the great Western cowboys), a double-agent called, enigmatically, The Professor, and the ruthless and erratic druglord Yvonne Menendez -- Caputo creates a compelling portrait of life along the border.Caputo's knowledge of the Arizona-Sonora desert, the ins-and-outs of the drug trade along its border, and the incredible details of ranch life and the lifestyle of the working cowboys or vaqueros, as they are called throughout, is beyond impressive. Following the rich cast of characters -- the thoughtful widower Castle, the man of intrigue "The Professor," the hothead Blaine -- was a delight. To be pulled along, through the dream -- or more accurately, the nightmare -- of this book, as it slowly unfolded was a pleasure.If I have a criticism of the book, it's that Caputo's authority is so great when he's operating in an area of expertise, such as cattle ranching, that when he ventures out of what he seems to know, he sometimes strikes a false note. One such example is a description of the crowd at an alt-country show on a college campus. He describes the students as wearing the sweatshirts of the university they attend. This detail -- minor, to be sure -- struck me as incredibly false. At times, the book's one true villain, Yvonne Menendez, felt a little too broadly drawn, that she drifted into caricature. Caputo does a great job of making most of the characters morally ambiguous, and while he does his best to show Yvonne's motives, deeply rooted in history as they are, it came up just short of the kind of nuanced detail that I would wanted. In short, I was hoping for "The Wire" of the Mexican drug trade, and it didn't quite hit that lofty mark. And in a book of such impeccable detail -- the descriptions of the mesas and canyons of the desert, of the birds and beasts who inhabit it are so obviously from life -- that these brief moments of unreality had the jarring effect of breaking the dream of the narrative, of ripping me out of the world and making me think about the author. And that was a shame.Thankfully, those sour notes were few and far between, and the plot is so compelling and so well-paced, that I can recommend this book without reservation. To live there, in the foothills of the Huachuca Mountains, for a few weeks, was a true pleasure, and a terrific way to begin the year as a reader. ( )

On a trip to Phoenix recently, I pulled out Crossers from Philip Caputo for an airplane companion. It's the story of Gil Castle, a 9/11 widower who retreats to the old family ranch in Arizona, near the Mexican border, to recover from the loss of his wife. There he reconnects to his family, to the Seneca he draws consolation from, and finally to himself. Then he stumbles across a Crosser, a Mexican making the crossing from Mexico to a hoped-for better life, and the trouble begins.

Crossers is deeply evocative of a time and place in history, much as Guy Gavriel Kay's Ysabel does for southern France, or Martin Cruz Smith's Gorky Park does for post-communist Moscow. Like those novels there is a deep nostalgia for the way things were, as well as a recognition that those times are best not gone back to. The novel does a great job of conveying what it means to be a rancher in Arizona, to love the land, and to be bound to it in a way that money can't buy.

The book is equal parts No Country for Old Men (comparisons to Cormac McCarthy are inevitable) and CNN news headlines. Most of the atrocities described in the book are factual or near so. The grim realities of those dying attempting to cross the desert and the border, and the horrific violence brought on by the drug trade, combine to produce a level of death and destruction that feels like it belongs to a medieval era in some other country, not 21st century America. The hierarchy of crime in Mexico also feels medieval - drug runners have guns & more money, and so determine who gets to traffics drugs or people along which route. They dominate the coyotes and the engranchadors that run human trafficking of illegal immigrants to the US, much as a feudal lord might direct a lower life form.

Interleaved with the current day story line are interleaved tales of Gil's grandfather Ben from the turn of the century border - a time when men pretty much enforced their own law, and lived by a code that often coincided with the law (but often did not). Ben dominates the novel - a self-reliant cowboy who participates in Mexican revolutions, sheriffs on the American side, and constantly battles his inner demons and shifts between good and bad. I found the descriptions of that era, and it's characters, as (or more) compelling than the modern story line. A quick snippet:

"Tibbets looked the part. Handlebar mustache, cat's whiskers at the corner of his eyes, two pearl-handled Colt revolvers, and the air of someone who could summon up reserves of unpleasantness if the situation required it."

Crossers is a powerful novel. If you have any interest in the reality of life on our southern border, read it. Whatever your perspective on the solution for that problem, Crossers will give you something to think about. ( )