Desert Blood

Since 1993, over 500 young, unfortunate, brown women have been found brutally abuse and murdered in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, across the border from El Paso, Texas, not including hundreds of others who have been missing and still have not been found. Desert Blood: The Juarez Murders (2005) by Alicia Gaspar de Alba, is a mystery novel about this 17-year crime-wave. When returns to her hometown El Paso to adopt a baby. She and her partner Brigit are ready to start a family and there are many young girls along the border who have children they cannot take care of. Coming home is difficult for Ivon because of troubled family relations, but her cousin is a social worker who can rush the process, so it seems ideal. While flying in, she reads a magazine article about the numbers of young women who are being killed but assumes it has nothing to do with her until Cecilia. The woman who was going to give them her baby, is hideously murdered just a few days short of giving birth and the baby is killed with her. Ivon is disturbed to discover that the authorities on both sides of the border are not just reluctant to solve the crime, but may be involved in helping to cover it up.
While she is trying to find evidence of what happened to Cecilia, Ivon's younger sister Irene is abducted and disappears in Mexico. Ivon knows that Irene must be found as soon as possible if she's to be found alive. When the Mexican and American police prove less that they will not help, Ivon decides to find her sister by herself. She finds herself confronting corrupt border officials, indifferent people on the lower ranks of society. As well as families and friends of the women who have already disappeared and members of her family who are divided in thinking that Ivon's lifestyle has caused this tragedy to fall on them. Ivon eventually discovers that trying to save her sister's life may cost her own life.

Desert Blood tells an absorbing story that is given more effect by knowing that it's based