I started to write when I was teaching at Augustana College, but after moving to the University of Notre Dame in 1970 I really began to put words on paper. I did not write because I thought you needed to publish to get tenure. I was not that savvy about how these things worked. I probably did need to write to get tenure, but I wrote because I thought I had something to say.
De La Torre writes “to assist the churchgoing layperson in understanding the complexity of the current immigration debate.” His book does far more than exhibit many of the complexities and calumnies of the politicized debate about immigration in the U.S. It offers powerful first-person testimonies from activists and especially from migrants. One migrant says that during his border crossing, the stars in the clear desert sky “reminded me that God had not abandoned me.” Trails allows the church in the U.S.