Border Crossing

By Jessica Lee Anderson
(Milkweed Editions, Hardcover, 9781571316899, 160pp.)

Publication Date: October 2009

Other Editions of This Title: Paperback

Categories: Social Issues - Depression & Mental Illness

Description

The mixed-race son of apple pickers, Manz lives with his hard-drinking mother and her truck-driver boyfriend in the hardscrabble world of dusty Rockhill, Texas. Forced to take a summer job rebuilding fence of a cattle ranch, Manz works alongside his friend Jed and meets a girl named Vanessa -- but even among his friends, Manz suffers from an uncontrollable paranoia. As the summer wears on, Manz becomes convinced that "Operation Wetback," a brutal postwar relocation program, is being put back into effect. As the voices in his head grow louder and more insistent, Manz struggles to negotiate the difficulties of adolescence, the perils of an oppressed environment, and the terror of losing his grip on reality.

Praise For Border Crossing…

"The first-person narrative gives readers a poignant close-up of the teen's gradual loss of control to paranoid schizophrenia. Anderson's vivid portrayal of this frightening illness nevertheless offers hope for the valiant human spirit."
—School Library Journal

"Poignant. Through the teenager's first-person narration, Anderson traces the isolated landscape of Rockhill, a very small town in Texas, and reveals the distressing stories behind the apparent simplicity of its inhabitants' lives. [A] thought-provoking exploration of mental illness."
—Kirkus

"Like most of the best fiction, YA or otherwise, Border Crossing is really about Manz's search for a sense of self, his chafing against cruelty encountered at almost every turn. The author does an impressive job portraying [his] frightening mental illness. Even as Manz's paranoia becomes obvious, we never stop empathizing with his point of view. The short chapters and fast-paced scenes keep the pages turning, but it is [Anderson's] descriptions that make this fictional world almost crystalline in its bleak beauty."
—Texas Observer

"Border Crossing is a fascinating and disturbing novel of Manz's descent into hallucinatory paranoia and suspicion, a result of his emerging schizophrenia. Using a first-person narration, Anderson skillfully unwraps the contours and tragedy of Manz's life and mental illness. Highly recommended."
—Greg Leitich Smith, author of Ninjas, Piranhas, and Galileo and Tofu and T.Rex

"This taut coming of age novel explores mental illness and border issues in an honest and clear voice."
—Boys Read

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