On Thursday, September 27, eight members of the book club met to discuss the timely
memoir The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border by Francisco Cantú. A former officer at
Customs and Border Patrol, Cantú affords readers a look at his experiences at the front lines of American
immigration policy enforcement. His reflections, observations, personal history, and anecdotes provide
crucial insight but eschew easy answers to the questions we continue to grapple with as a country
around our Southern border- what it means, how it looks, and who is allowed to cross. Our group
discussed the author’s trajectory and motivation for sharing these snapshots from his life, and his
reflections on feeling alternately powerless and adept at a job that caused him such internal discord.
September Bonus meeting: By popular demand, the book club met twice in September. On Thursday,
September 20 six members gathered to discuss The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton. The group
delighted in Wharton’s quick wit, cultural observations, parallels with our modern age. We debated her
characters’ agency in the confines of their social circles, and remained divided on the moral compass and gradual downfall of Wharton’s protagonist Lily Bart.