Exit Wounds

"It wasn’t until [Jusionyte] worked as an emergency paramedic along both sides of the border in Nogales, Arizona—and earned a PhD that included ethnographic research—that she was thrust into a world that forced her seismic mental shift away from popular beliefs about guns and the U.S.-Mexico border."

"The wound resulting from the flow of weapons from the US into Mexico reaches our societies' furthest nerve endings. Ieva Jusionyte explores this wound with mind-blowing courage and the most incisive scalpel. She writes with Didion-like poise, observational power, precision, and intelligence."—Francisco Goldman, author of Monkey Boy

"Jusionyte investigates in archives, hospitals, prisons, and dark alleys; she interviews victims and criminals (operating both within and outside the law) to present evidence that the arms traffic that goes parallel to the 'war on drugs' is not a flaw or an accident but both a system of control and a business. Here it is, in black and white, the explanation for the United States gunwalking operation that contemplates the tragedy of the Mexican people not as a problem but as an acceptable outcome. Exit Wounds is as relevant as a book can be; it sheds light on mechanisms at the core of our daily catastrophe."—Yuri Herrera, author of Signs Preceding the End of the World

"In this absolutely riveting account, Jusionyte follows US guns south across the border to uncover the stories of the people who buy, smuggle, use, seize, and sometimes even recycle them. Brilliantly told and bravely researched, Exit Wounds shows the full devastation of this flood of American-made steel—not only for the hundreds of thousands of people left dead, maimed, or missing but also for families, communities, and Mexican society."—Peter Andreas, author of Border Games: The Politics of Policing the U.S.-Mexico Divide

"A remarkable and chilling book. Jusionyte writes with urgency, brilliance, and grace."—Jennifer Finney Boylan, author of She's Not There and co-author with Jodi Picoult of Mad Honey

"Jusionyte directs our eyes beyond the pervasive political rhetoric about walls, razor wire, and buoys in the Rio Grande to the hidden world of gun smuggling. Heartbreaking, sobering, and troubling, Exit Wounds is an urgent call to those who want to fully understand the complexities and synergy between the United States and Mexico. Superbly written and impeccably researched, this book is simply exceptional."—Alfredo Corchado, Mexico-border correspondent for the Dallas Morning News and author of Midnight in Mexico

"Exit Wounds is a harrowing, intimate, and profoundly illuminating journey through the asymmetrical exchanges of guns, drugs, money, people, and the stories about them that together constitute the all-American borderlands between the United States and Mexico. Humanizing a host of urgent social issues, this is a vital book for our times."—Lucas Bessire, author of Running Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains

"Compelling, disturbing, and powerful."—Jason De León, author of Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling