The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail [Paperback]

One day a few years ago, 300 migrants were kidnapped between the remote desert towns of Altar, Mexico, and Sasabe, Arizona. A local priest got 120 released, many with broken ankles and other marks of abuse, but the rest vanished. Óscar Martínez, a young writer from El Salvador, was in Altar soon after the abduction, and his account of the migrant disappearances is only one of the harrowing stories he garnered from two years spent traveling up and down the migrant trail from Central America and across the US border. More than a quarter of a million Central Americans make this increasingly dangerous journey each year, and each year as many as 20,000 of them are kidnapped.

Martínez writes in powerful, unforgettable prose about clinging to the tops of freight trains; finding respite, work and hardship in shelters and brothels; and riding shotgun with the border patrol. Illustrated with stunning full-color photographs,The Beastis the first book to shed light on the harsh new reality of the migrant trail in the age of thenarcotraficantes.NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Economist & The Financial Times

“Harrowing … The graceful, incisive writing liftsThe Beast from being merely an impressive feat of reportage into the realm of literature. Mr. Martínez has produced something that is an honorable successor to enduring works like George Orwell’sThe Road to Wigan Pieror Jacob Riis’sHow the Other Half Lives.”
—New York Times

“The most extraordinary (and harrowing) book I read this year. Beautiful and searing and impossible to put down.”
—Junot Díaz

“The world that Oscar Martínez, a Salvadoran journalist, l3v