EL CAMINO DEL RIO

Presidio, Texas is hard country and hardship duty for U.S. Border Patrol officer Dolph Martinez. When circling buzzards lead him to a corpse in Red Wing boots with a .22 bullet hole in an expensive haircut, Dolph realizes this is no ordinary norteño trying to cross the deserted border from Mexico. Is the dead man connected to Sister Quinn's efforts to help Central American political refugees find sanctuary? Is Sister Quinn, a nun who practices curanderismo, mixed up in a smuggling operation? On the border--El Camino del Rio--men and women on both sides of the river and both sides of the law think they know each other's business, but nothing is what it seems. And it is Dolph's job and his destiny to unravel the mystery. This gritty, atmospheric story, the first novel to win the Frank Waters Southwest Writing Contest, has the harsh power and heat of the Texas desert.

"A richly imagined and terrifically realized novel. Complex and humane, always surprising, it rings as true as the winter light across the southern desert."--James Crumley

"Mr. Sanderson is especially good at contrasting the clarity and austere natural beauty of the Chihuahuan desert with the murky, Orson Welles aura that envelops human society there."--Tom Pilkington, Dallas Morning News

"[A] lean and lyrical first novel."--Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book

"Makes the gritty, thankless landscape of the border come alive, from the relentless heat to the failed hopes."--Paul Skenazy, Washington Post Book World

Jim Sanderson lives in Beaumont, Texas, where he teaches at Lamar State University which honored him as the 2002 Distinguished Faculty Lecturer.