The Asylum Seekers
A Chronicle of Life, Death, and Community at the Border
by Cristina Rathbone
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Pub Date Mar 18 2025 | Archive Date Not set
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Description
A remarkable, decimating work of reporting by award-winning journalist and priest Cristina Rathbone about asylum seekers trapped at a port of entry to the US: the trauma they carry, the community they create, and the faith they maintain.
The Asylum Seekers offers a rare narrative account of the horror of the US-Mexico border. Borders run through author Cristina Rathbone too, whose mother was a Cuban refugee. So in 2019 she travels to Juarez, unsure what to do but determined to learn.
Weaving intimate portraits of individuals with broader stories about the community, reporting from the border as a whole, and reflections on the meaning of faith in a place of suffering, Rathbone tells the story of Mexican asylum seekers living in a makeshift tent camp at the foot of a bridge. Life in the camp is both hectic and harrowing. Families arrive. Families leave. Families get through to the US. Families are returned from the US. Women weep, children squabble, and grown men sob over photographs of their murdered sons' mutilated bodies.
Here too, however, are beauty, and empathy, and hope. Over time, a leadership team emerges. The community begins to convene daily meetings, establish systems of distribution for donations, and start classes for the kids. Serving as an unofficial chaplain, Rathbone is there through it all: listening, receiving, assisting, and most of all learning about what authentic faith looks like under conditions such as these.
Written in the tradition of My Fourth Time, We Drowned and Rivermouth, The Asylum Seekers renders in startling, intimate detail the day-to-day lives of people who are determined to enter the US legally and who often suffer for it. The result is a fierce, poignant inquiry into the dignity of those who seek asylum--and into what we owe each other.
A Note From the Publisher
- Narrative, literary writing offering an honest and coherent vision of day-to-day life at the border
- Explores the entire story of waiting for asylum for six months, as opposed to a news story that covers a day or two, to paint a humanizing and intimate picture of asylum seekers
- Written by an award-winning author, journalist, and daughter of a Cuban refugee
Advance Praise
"This book is a cleric's account of her sojourn among people camped at our country's southern border, people seeking asylum and rarely receiving it. Rathbone writes with admirable candor about her small triumphs and failures, her doubts and uncertainties. But to me, the great strength of this story is the author's passionate sympathy for the desperate people she works with. It suffuses the book, like antivenin to the slanders forever thrown at immigrants." —Tracy Kidder, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Rough Sleepers and Mountains Beyond Mountains
"The Asylum Seekers shines with a kind of moral clarity that illuminates not only the horrific effects of the United States immigration system on individuals, families, and children, but the personal toll of working alongside those affected. A must-read." —Alejandra Oliva, author of Rivermouth: A Chronicle of Language, Faith, and Migration
"These pages are filled with both anguish and uplift, and they depict a religious faith that is anything but ethereal. Nothing I have read about the so-called border crisis has torn up my heart and haunted my conscience like The Asylum Seekers." —Samuel G. Freedman, award-winning author of Upon This Rock, Small Victories, and other books
"This a book on the edge, by a priest on the edge. The Paso del Norte bridge at the US-Mexico border is both a physical structure and a moral faultline. In The Asylum Seekers, Cristina Rathbone submits herself, body and soul, to the teaching of the people who most clearly see its double nature: the powerless, the victimized, the dispossessed and exploited. With a style that clicks like a Geiger counter at the approach of primary reality, Rathbone crosses frontier after frontier of understanding." —James Parker, columnist for The Atlantic and author of Get Me Through the Next Five Minutes
"No other book I've read brings you so closely, so intimately, into the lives of Latin American migrants living in poverty. Fleeing horrors and lethal danger, they encounter the new horrors of US border policies bent on ending the right to asylum. At moments, The Asylum Seekers seems to combine the genres of the thriller and the account of a pilgrim's progress. This staggeringly beautiful and important book will fill your heart and mind with a sense of wonder, sorrow, and gratitude for what it has shown you." —Francisco Goldman, Pulitzer Prize-finalist author of Monkey Boy
"With the eloquence of a poet, the spiritual depth of a contemplative, and the courage of a prophet, Cristina Rathbone reveals how her encounters with the men, women, and children seeking asylum break open her own heart in ways she could never have imagined. She reminds us that the most revolutionary—and most Christian—of all human acts is the simple yet seemingly 'useless' act of being fully present and attentive to another human being in their suffering." —Roberto Goizueta, author of Caminemos con Jesús
"The Asylum Seekers is elegant, unsentimental, loving, and piercingly honest. It is a prayer--and almost a miracle. Not because prayer is magic, but because it is the planting ground for hope. For those who despair and those who rage, for all who thirst, Cristina Rathbone digs a furrow in the dirt of our shared suffering, and makes a space where we can abide together." —Sara Miles, author of Take This Bread and City of God
"Cristina Rathbone is the rare spiritual memoirist who also has the descriptive gifts of a reporter. Here she brings to life the beauty, kinship, and compassion of individuals seeking asylum at the US-Mexico border. A vivid and searing look at one of the most important stories of our time." —Stephanie Saldaña, author of What We Remember Will Be Saved
Marketing Plan
- Trade advertising
- Social media and digital campaign targeting narrative nonfiction readers, those interested in immigration and asylum stories, and spirituality readers
- Outreach to Immigration and asylum organizations as well as spiritual and Christian relief organizations
- Author speaking and signing events
- Seasonal promotion opportunities, including Hispanic Heritage Month and World Refugee Day
Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9798889832010 |
| PRICE | $28.99 (USD) |
| PAGES | 270 |
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Reviewer 1556275
The Asylum Seekers by Cristina Rathbone is an eye opening, intimate and honest narrative of life, community, family and endurance at the US-Mexico border. Cristina Rathbone is an award winning journalist and priest who in 2019 traveled to Juarez in order to learn and experience the conditions at the border where families and individuals have fled from trauma and hardship in order to seek asylum. It is a heartbreaking and powerful read as we learn about the stories of families, communities, the young and old who arrive and leave at the border as asylum is denied and granted with no specific reason or system. It is also an exploration of faith and its meaning in such hardship and how it can be a connection with others in need of help and support. It is astonishing how people who have experienced the worst of violence and trauma are able to hold onto their humanity, their compassion, curiosity and love for others as a community grows along the border and leaders emerge to aid others who are suffering and being exploited. It is a necessary and vital read that examines the social, political and humanitarian factors that impact the lives of those who seek to enter the US legally and who often suffer the consequences of changing policies and practices that deny the desperately sought and warranted sanctuary. A powerful honest portrait of faith and asylum that asks for how long can we look away? 4.25 Stars ✨
Ashley S, Educator
This was an eye opening book about Rathbone's experience at the Mexico-US border before the pandemic. These pages are full of sadness, frustration and despair, but also hope, love, and community. I don't think any of us have any understanding of what this process is like if we have never witnessed it and been a part of it.
Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read this book.
Andrea D, Reviewer
Cristina Rathbone’s The Asylum Seekers is a harrowing and deeply human account of life at the US-Mexico border, where hope, resilience, and unimaginable hardship converge. Rathbone, an award-winning journalist and Episcopal priest, brings her unique background to Juarez, weaving intimate portraits of asylum seekers with reflections on faith and the resilience of the human spirit.
Rathbone, who has previously offered powerful insights into life in schools and prisons, turned to the cloth and now pastors unhoused families in the Northeast. Her dual perspective as a journalist and spiritual leader infuses the narrative with compassion and clarity. In The Asylum Seekers, she chronicles life in a makeshift tent camp at the foot of a bridge, where families fleeing trauma risk everything to seek asylum. Amid the chaos of families arriving, departing, and sometimes being forcibly returned, Rathbone captures both the despair and the beauty of a community determined to survive. She writes of grief-stricken parents, children playing in perilous conditions, and the haunting stories of those mourning unimaginable loss.
Yet, Rathbone also highlights the strength and ingenuity of the asylum seekers. Over time, a leadership team emerges, donations are distributed, and even classes for children begin. As an unofficial chaplain, Rathbone listens, supports, and learns what authentic faith looks like under these extreme conditions.
Drawing on her personal connection—her mother was a Cuban refugee—Rathbone weaves the intimate stories of asylum seekers with broader reflections on community, endurance, and the moral obligations we owe one another.
#broadleafbooks #theasylumseekers #cristinarathbone
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