The ‘her’ in this case is Shawna Forde and the hell she wrought was self-evolved from a young age. From a troubled life as an infant that eventually lead to teenage prostitution and more than a dozen arrests Shawna grafted and drifted through life until she found a belief, a desire that she could control and make her own, the protection of the borders of the United States at all costs.
Her very beliefs led to the down-spiral that her life evolved into and finally spiraled out of control. Heiwart introduces her to us as she and her band of ne'er -do-wells commitment a home invasion in the tiny Arizona town of Arivaca, murdering in cold blood the man of the house, his nine year old daughter and severely wounding and wife and mother. With broad stokes of description we are given a story that is as intriguing as any suspense novel, tightly woven around the facts behind this true-crime drama.
We are introduced to the Minuteman Project and given a superbly well researched history of history of the modern-day phenomena that sprung to new life after that fatal day that planes crashed into New York’s twin towers. And we are given a background on one of America’s last stalwart Wild West towns, the dusty burb of Arivaca, just twelve miles from the Mexico where a life of smuggling over the border, whether it was drugs or humans, is given a blind-eye or at least disregarded by the locals as normal for the region.
When the two elements finally combined they caused a combustible nativist explosion that led to a showdown from a private militia with the drug runners of area and blew wide open the true nature of a bigoted, psychopath and her delusionary hold on the border watching movement.