The Crossing

Manny Bustos, a fourteen-year-old orphan living on the streets of Juarez, Mexico, seeks to escape his squalid life on the brink of starvation, and to escape the street thugs who would sell him into prostitution, by crossing illegally into the United States. Meanwhile Marine Sergeant Robert Locke often crosses the Rio Grande in the other direction and for another form of escape: he seeks, in the noisy clubs and cheap Scotch of Juarez, to keep from his consciousness the voices of men he commanded in Vietnam, men he watched die horribly while calling to him for help he could not give. His path crosses Manny's; eventually he learns of Manny's plan; and once again he hears a call for help he feels he cannot provide.

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