"We have been attempting to swap the imaginative and prescient and the dialog approximately border fears."

Border Odyssey takes us on a force towards figuring out the U.S./Mexico divide: all 1,969 miles—from Boca Chica to Tijuana—pressing on with the invaluable fiction of a map.

"We had to visit where the place numerous blameless humans have been kicked, stubborn, spit on, arrested, detained, trafficked, and killed. it's going to develop into transparent that the border, la frontera, was once extra multifaceted and profound than something lets have invented approximately it from afar."

Along the adventure, 5 centuries of cultural historical past (indigenous, French, Spanish, Mexican, African American, colonist, and U.S.), wars, and laws spread. and during remark, dialog, and meditation, Border Odyssey scopes the tales of the folks and cities on either sides.

"Stories are the other of partitions: they call for unlock, retelling, exhibiting, connecting, each one photograph chipping away at obstacles. partitions are complete stops. yet tales are like commas, regularly making attainable the following clause."

Among the terrain traversed: partitions and extra partitions, unforeseen roadblocks and patrol officials; a golfing path (you might force a ball around the border); a Civil struggle battlefield (you may well camp there); the southernmost plantation within the usa; a hand-drawn ferry, a road-runner tracked desolate tract, and a wide ranging nationwide park; barbed cord, bridges, and a trucking-trade thoroughfare; ghosts with weapons; obscured, unmarked, and unpaved roads; a Catholic priest and his canines, paintings, icons, and political cartoons; a sheriff and a chain-smoking mayor; a Tex-Mex eatery empty of consumers and a B&B shuttering its doorways; murder-laden newspaper headlines at breakfast; the kindness of the border-crossing underground; and too many old, impoverished, ex-U.S. farmworkers, braceros, covered as much as have Thompson take their photograph.