"Crossing the Wire"

Durango Young-Adult Author Crosses into Border Dispute

By Ken Wright, 5-10-06

Will Hobbs’ books have always dealt with challenging topics for his juvenile and teen readers – and anyone: danger, risk, adventure, death, loss, and relationships with friends and family and the land around us.

In his new novel, though, Hobbs enters the realm of political controversy.

Crossing the Wire, released last month, follows the harrowing adventure of a 15-year-old boy who, following the death of his father, flees his family’s hard-scrabble farm in central Mexico to find work north of the border so he can send money home to his family.

Hobbs’ book adds a new perspective into the heated and ideologically-tainted discussion of illegal immigration. Crossing the Wire provides a visceral rendering of a teen’s motivations and experiences attempting to “cross the wire,” a slang term for entering the U.S. illegally, that is accessible and meaningful to teens and adults alike.

Hobbs will be reading from Crossing the Wire tomorrow, Thursday, May 11th, from 6 to 7 p.m., at Maria’s Bookshop, 960 Main Avenue, Durango.

The Durango-based Hobbs is the author of 16 novels for kids and teens. Seven of those novels have been named Best Books for Young Adults by the American Library Association. Others have received the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award, the Colorado Book Award, the Western Writers of America Spur Award, the California Young Reader Medal, and others.

Hobbs says he has been chewing on the idea for Crossing the Wire for years, clipping articles, reading books, and watching documentaries. He was inspired by his own first job out of college -- picking fruit in Idaho alongside a dozen men from Mexico who sent their paychecks home to support their families.

One thing he says he has discovered, though, is that times have changed since his fruit-picking days. “It has become difficult to impossible in recent years from migrant workers like the ones I knew to return home for part of the year,” Hobbs says. “Imagine the impact on them and their families back in Mexico.”

“You’d have to have tremendous determination to try it at all,” Hobbs adds. “To try it without money to pay the ‘coyotes’ (human smugglers), you have to be desperate and very brave.”

Hobbs began the book project in earnest in 2003. He started by spending a week along Arizona’s border, walking, driving, and interviewing people. He even witnessed a border-crossing drug bust that later appeared as a scene in the book.

Hobbs choose to set his story in the harsh desert of southern Arizona, he says, because since 9/11, “Increased security in the border towns and cities has deflected most of the illegal crossers to remote stretches of the border. In 2004, when ‘Crossing the Wire’ takes place, more than half of all illegal crossings were into Arizona. The same held true in 2005. Hundreds die in Arizona’s deserts every year. Many of the dead are never identified.”

Mainly, though, the book is about Victor – as a human being. “Who was he, where was he from, and why had he left home?” Hobbs asks. “What had he gone through to get this far? What were the twists and turns that led him to this forbidding landscape, and where was he trying to go?”

That impact and other personal experiences are something lost in the recent heated debates over the issue of illegal immigration, Hobbs argues. “So much of what we hear and read about illegal immigration is generalizations, statistics, and political arguments,” he says. “But far more compelling were the human-interest stories, which told of the experiences of individuals trying to cross the border illegally.”

“There has to be a better way,” Hobbs says.

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