For readers of Jon Krakauer and Susan Orlean, The Coyote’s Bicycle brings alive a never-before-told phenomenon at our southern border, and the individual drama of those who cross.

It wasn’t surprising when the first abandoned bicycles were found along the dirt roads and farmland just across the border from Tijuana, but before long they were arriving in droves. The bicycles went from interest, to nuisance, to phenomenon. But until they caught the attention of journalist Kimball Taylor, only a small about The Coyote’s Bicycle: The Untold Tale of Seven 1000 Bicycles and the Rise of a Borderland Empire cadre of human smugglers—coyotes—and migrants could state how or why they’d obtained there. This is the story of 7,000 bicycles that made an incredible trip and one son from Oaxaca who arrived at the boundary with nothing, built a little empire, and then vanished.

Taylor follows the path of the border bikes through a few of society’s most effective institutions, and, with the help of an unlikely resource, he reconstructs the rise of 1 of Tijuana’s most innovative coyotes. Touching on immigration and globalization, as well as the annals of the US/Mexico border, The Coyote’s Bike reaches once an immersive analysis of the outrageous incident and a true-crime, rags-to-riches story.