Vibrant 'Club' Links Two Countries In Award-Winning Book
On a Saturday night, the bridge that links downtown El Paso, Texas, to Ciudad Juarez in Mexico is hauntingly still. Once, this was a border crossing flush with life; now, after years of brutal drug violence, it's like a graveyard. It's certainly not the border that American author Benjamin Alire Saenz recalls from his high school days.
"We'd all pile in a couple of cars. There'd be like 10 of us and we'd come over to Juarez," Saenz remembers. "We'd go to all these places like The Cave, the Club Hawaii ... the Kentucky Club ... and we would just have a good time and laugh."
Ciudad Juarez is a sprawling city of more than a million people. It lies directly south of El Paso, like a muddled reflection off a mostly arid Rio Grande. For Saenz, this meeting place between the U.S. and Mexico is home. The border is more than just a place in his stories; it's a silent but ever-present character.