Luis Alberto Urrea, the author of this year’s Common Book, The Devil’s Highway, visited campus Wednesday to speak to a crowded auditorium of students about his life and his book.

“This is our chance to have a discussion with our author about his book,” said Edward Taylor, dean of undergraduate academic affairs, to a packed house of students, faculty and others interested in Urrea and his work.

Luis Alberto Urrea was born in Tijuana, Mexico. He moved to southern California as a child, and travelled back and forth many times before ending up in Chicago. The Devil’s Highway is Urrea’s fourth book, centering around the story of two dozen Mexicans who attempted to cross the border between the U.S. and Mexico via the Devil’s Highway region of Arizona. Fourteen of the men, called the “Yuma 14” by the press at the time, died horribly and needlessly along the way.

“The initial urge was a very simple one,” Urrea said. “I just wanted people to care. I felt that these guys in this book were disrespected in life and even worse in death. Their deaths were horrible; they’ve been used, they’ve been abused, and they’ve been insulted. It was really interesting to try to reveal as many secrets as I could learn about the border that I didn’t know to tell you. I figured that once you know, once I put the information that I could glean in your hands, maybe you, as you go forth and change the world, can use it somehow.”

After his initial discussion, he took questions from students in the audience. One question posed was what Urrea himself would like to see happen as far as border policies and politics are concerned.

“I would like [politicians] to pay serious attention to the issue; I don’t think either candidate is at the moment, sadly, but that’s partially because of the demographics involved,” Urrea said. “First and foremost, of course, I want to see the deaths stop. The number of crossers is dropping precipitously, but the number of deaths hasn’t dropped.”

Overall student opinion about the year’s common book was almost universally positive.

“It was pretty interesting in parts, and kind of illuminating to hear people’s stories from a different point of view than usual,” freshman Aiden Jensen said. “We don’t really hear the full story in America most of the time.”

Even those who admitted to not reading the book were interested in doing so after listening to Urrea and others discuss it.

“Actually, no, I did not read the Common Book,” said Yara Moosa, also a freshman. “I wish I did though; I’m going to read it, now that I’ve heard about it. It’s not that I wasn’t interested, I just felt like I didn’t have time to read the book.”

The Devil’s Highway is the third installment of the UW’s Common Book program. While controversial at first, the program has matured in the last three years.

“I think one of the important things we’ve done is redefine it from being a freshman book to being a common book,” Taylor said. “This book gets read by thousands of our undergraduates, as well as thousands of our community members, our alumni and our regents.”

“So long as we keep the book around issues that really matter to the students and matter to the community, they will respond,” Taylor said.

Reach reporter Anthony Michael Erickson at news@dailyuw.com.