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When the search for your father turns into a treasure map

Ruben Navarrette Jr. on

SAN DIEGO -- My dear reader, let me tell you something you probably already know: Practice does not always make perfect. Many journalists write for a living, but that doesn't mean all journalists are good writers.

Some are good reporters. Some are good observers. Some have a good handle on people. Some are good thinkers.

San Diego-based journalist Jean Guerrero is one heck of a good writer. Good enough, at 30, to have earned a master's of fine arts in creative nonfiction, and have written for The Wall Street Journal from Mexico City. Good enough to have her critically acclaimed first book -- "Crux: A Cross-Border Memoir" -- published by Penguin/Random House, and see that labor of love win the 2016 PEN/Fusion Emerging Writers Prize.

And good enough to have started her book's prologue with this grito:

"I'm sorry, Papi. Perdoname. I know how much you hate to be pursued. You've spent your whole life running. Now the footsteps chasing you are mine."

I was hooked. What follows are pages and pages of smooth prose, painful introspection, smart analysis and deep self-awareness -- coupled with a brazen airing of familial laundry.

 

As a reporter for public television, Guerrero's day job has her covering the U.S.-Mexico border, and she has become an expert on timely yet thorny subjects like family separation and human trafficking.

From what I've seen, she knows how to find a story. But what makes her stand out, and makes the book worth the read, is her ability to tell that story.

As I was reading, I got a surprise. The book isn't about what I thought it would be about. This "cross-border" memoir is not really about the border at all, as much as it is about a man who got crossways with those who loved him.

The U.S.-Mexico border is merely the stage for this play. The plot revolves around family. The drama between Guerrero, her parents and her younger sister spreads everywhere -- including both sides of the border -- like the contents of a spilled purse.

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