Multicultural Student Services J-Term Book Club to Read "The Devil's Highway: A True Story"

The Multicultural Student Services J-Term Book Club invites students, faculty and staff to read The Devil’s Highway: A True Story, by Luis Alberto Urrea, in January 2011.

Luis Alberto Urrea

Luis Alberto Urrea

The book follows the story of 26 men, who in May 2001 attempted to cross the Mexican border into the desert of southern Arizona, through the deadly region known as the Devil’s Highway. Only 12 of the men made it out alive. The Devil’s Highway was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize, and was selected as one of the “best books of the year” by The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, and the Chicago Tribune.

Urrea, an award-winning author and journalist, has been inducted into the Latino Literary Hall of Fame and has enjoyed widespread critical acclaim. Born in Tijuana to a Mexican father and an American mother, Urrea is a writer who uses his dual-culture life experiences to explore greater themes of love, loss and triumph. He has published more than a dozen books, across several genres, and has taught expository writing and fiction workshops at Harvard University, the University of Colorado, and the University of Louisiana-Lafayette. He currently is a creative writing professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

The MSS J-Term Book Club will meet from noon to 1 p.m. Thursdays, Jan. 6, 13, 20 and 27, in Room 108, O'Shaughnessy-Frey Library Center. Book Club participants will have the opportunity to have lunch with Urrea during "convo" hour on Feb. 22, 2011. Later that day, from 6:30 to 9 p.m., he will give a lecture and will sign books in the O'Shaughnessy Educational Center auditorium. The lecture is open to the public.

To register for the MSS J-Term Book Club, e-mail multicultural@stthomas.edu. Free books are available to the first 40 students who sign up.