She was a little girl with a big name—Josseline Jamileth Hernández Quinteros. Just five feet tall and a hundred pounds, she had an adult-sized responsibility: the fourteen-year-old was to shepherd her ten-year-old brother all the way from Honduras to their mother in Los Angeles. But Josseline fell ill in a remote Arizona desert, just north of the Mexico line, and her smuggler and the rest of her group abandoned her. She died alone in the wilderness in February 2008.

"Most border ‘experts’ and immigration writers are mere tourists. This writer is not one of them. In Margaret Regan’s The Death of Josseline, you have a writer who lives the story, reports from the heart of the killzone, and works the territory on a regular basis. The many admirers of Enrique’s Journey will find much to admire, and fear, in this powerful report."

To listen to an NPR interview with author Margaret Regan, click here .