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"Emilio thinks he is living the American Dream: his parents, who emigrated from Guatemala to California, sacrifice daily to make sure of it. And his life seems relatively normal until he turns sixteen. Like most teenagers, Emilio is determined to get his driver's license-however, his mother dissuades him from doing so. When Emilio asks why, his parents reveal a shocking secret: he is undocumented. Emilio adjusts to his new normal. Under the Dreamers' Act, he attends Berkley. He falls in love. Everything seems fine...until Emilio gets into a car accident and-without a driver's license or any documentation-the policeman on the scene reports him to Immigration Services. Emilio is deported to Guatemala. But he is determined to get back to California, the only home he has ever known. It is an epic journey that takes him through the cities, jungles, and deserts of South America, towards thieves and corrupt law enforcement but also kind strangers and new friends. Drawing from interviews with Dreamers, and told in lyrical prose, Micheline Marcom weaves a heart-pounding and heartbreaking tale of adventure. This is a timely novel that asks us what we have in common, across experiences and borders, and what truly makes us American"--
About the author
Micheline Aharonian Marcom was born in Saudi Arabia and raised in Los Angeles. She has published seven novels, including a trilogy of books about the Armenian genocide and its aftermath in the 20th century. She has received fellowships and awards from the Lannan Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, and the US Artists' Foundation. Her first novel, Three Apples Fell From Heaven, was a New York Times Notable Book and Runner-Up for the PEN/Hemingway Award for First Fiction. Her second novel, The Daydreaming Boy, won the PEN/USA Award for Fiction. In 2008, Marcom taught in Beirut, Lebanon, on a Fulbright Fellowship. Marcom splits her time between California and Virginia where she is a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Virginia. She is the founder and Creative Director of The New American Story Project [NASP], a digital oral history project focused on unaccompanied Central American minors who journeyed thousands of miles to reach the US. Visit NASP at NewAmericanStoryProject.org.
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"[A] poetic nightmarescape that hums with foreboding and the anguish of lost innocence....Marcom masterfully navigates the graphic ugliness of deportation and anguished immigration with entreaties to a remote and capricious God, creating a tough but necessary and beautiful novel."—BOOKLIST
