Living in El Paso, just a mile from the Rio Grande, Octavio is a skinny brown kid on the border, riding his bike out into the desert, growing up among those who live there and those passing through on their way North. Rituals of childhood and rites of passage are remembered as singular, dramatic events, moments of trauma, and transformation with life-changing reverberations. 

“To enter into this book is like walking into a shrine, walls lined with beautiful paintings . . . Some you will stand in front of for a long time, and others are brilliantly uncomfortable and can make you weep if you linger too long.” Daniel Chacon