As noted in this week's issue, Tucson Weekly arts editor Margaret Regan will be making her debut on the book circuit this Saturday, Feb. 13, at the Patagonia Writers' Round-Up. You can find her down there from 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Patagonia Public Library. She'll be doing her first reading and signing in Tucson at Antigone Books on Fourth Avenue next Friday, Feb. 19, and she'll be visiting with my friend Bill Buckmaster on Arizona Illustrated at 6:30 p.m., Tuesday, Feb. 23, on Channel 6.

Margaret has just published The Death of Josseline: Immigration Stories from the Arizona-Mexico Borderlands, which expands on reporting that she did for TW and other publications over the last decade.

Check out what the critics are saying:

"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."
—Luis Alberto Urrea, author of The Devil’s Highway

"The Death of Josseline is a humane, sensitive, and informative perspective on a current and controversial topic. It also testifies to the fastest growing international criminal activity today: body trafficking. We all must pay attention."
—Ana Castillo, author of The Guardians

"The Death of Josseline is a border reality check. It tells searing stories of those who’ve died crossing the Sonora/Arizona desert, of young people sent to prison in Tucson for the crime of working, and of the courageous people of conscience who stand up for the rights of migrants. Read it, and see why our deadly immigration policies need to be changed."
—David Bacon, author of Illegal People

"This book should be required reading for everyone—from President Obama and the director of Homeland Security to the Border Patrol agents, the vigilantes, and migrant rights activists. If people on both sides of the immigration issue picked up this book instead of arms, we would come to a peaceful resolution; it gave me inspiration."
—Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street

"In The Death of Josseline, Margaret Regan stands midpoint between immigration’s push and pull . . . her clear and sympathetic eyes watching the south on its treacherous slog north."
—Tom Miller, author of The Panama Hat Trail

"There may be no better way to understand the muddle that is U.S. immigration policy than by reading these portraits of people who cross the border in hopes of a better life. . . . The Death of Josseline is an excellent way to understand—on a human level—the ebb and flow of human labor across political boundaries."
—Ted Robbins, Southwest correspondent, National Public Radio

“Regan…has compiled a compelling chronicle of the flow of migrants from northern Mexico into the “Tucson Sector” of Arizona, distilling the many facets of this phenomenon into an enlightening account.”
—Booklist

“Regan puts a human face on the multiple problems created by desperate, poverty-stricken people entering the United States illegally to look for work.”
—Kirkus Reviews

Buy your copy now! Or visit one of our local bookstores. They could the use the money, and the gov't could use the tax revenue.

We'll have an excerpt in TW next week.

I've been reading Margaret's work for close to two decades now. She's blessed with a sharp eye, a good heart and spine of steel. Her border stories have captured the complexity and heartache that runs so deeply in our borderlands. Would that we had more of her in the biz.