Do They Know I'm Running? Book

From acclaimed author David Corbett, a stunning and suspenseful novel of a life without loyalties and the borders inside ourselves.

Roque Montalvo is wise beyond his eighteen years. Orphaned at birth, a gifted musician, he’s stuck in a California backwater, helping his Salvadoran aunt care for his damaged brother, an ex-marine badly wounded in Iraq. When immigration agents arrest his uncle, the family has nowhere else to turn. Roque, badgered by his street-hardened cousin, agrees to bring the old man back, relying on the criminal gangs that control the dangerous smuggling routes from El Salvador, through Guatemala and Mexico, to the U.S. border.
 
But his cousin has told Roque only so much. In reality, he will have to transport not just his uncle but two others: an Arab whose intentions are disturbingly vague and a young beauty promised to a Mexican crime lord. Roque discovers that his journey involves crossing more than one kind of border, and he will be asked time and again to choose between survival and betrayal—of his country, his family, his heart.

Publishers Weekly

Corbett (Blood of Paradise) delivers a rich, hard-hitting epic that illuminates the violent and surreal landscapes of Central America and Mexico. After 18-year-old Roque Montalvo’s uncle, Faustino, an illegal Salvadoran immigrant, is deported in an INS sweep, Roque’s criminal cousin, Pablo “Happy” Orantes, cooks up a scheme to smuggle Faustino back to California, along with a mysterious Palestinian asylum seeker, but it involves a hefty price to Latin American thugs. Happy strikes a deal with an FBI agent, offering up a major drug dealer for his family’s citizenship papers. Roque travels from California to El Salvador, where he discovers that the gangsters want him to deliver a beautiful girl about his age, Lupe, to a vicious border crime leader. Roque and Lupe embark on an unforgettable journey north, pursued by banditos, police, and the FBI. Of course, Roque falls for Lupe and vows to help her escape a dismal fate. Fans of Luis Alberto Urrea and Don Winslow alike will be richly rewarded. (Mar.)