ARCHIVE – John Vaillant
John Vaillant is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, National Geographic and Outside, among others. His first book, 2005’s The Golden Spruce, was a bestseller and won several awards, including the Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction. His second nonfiction book, The Tiger, is also an award-winning bestseller. Filmmaker Sasha Snow adapted The Golden Spruce into a film entitled Hadwin’s Judgement. His latest book, a novel, is The Jaguar’s Children, which has been shortlisted for the 2015 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. He was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts and now lives in Vancouver.
The Jaguar’s Children
Hector, a young Zapotec fleeing Mexico for a better life in the United States with his friend Cesar, a biotech researcher, pays to be smuggled across the border by unscrupulous “coyotes,” concealed in the tightly sealed, empty tank of a water truck packed with illegal migrants. Abandoned by the smugglers in the desert, they are left to die, their only lifeline Cesar’s phone. When Cesar slips into unconsciousness, Hector reaches out to the one name with an American code – AnniMac – that becomes his lifeline to the world as he reveals what has brought him to this place.