This novel deals with the issues of illegal immigrants, foster care, drugs, teen pregnancy, etcetera. It does provide the reader some valuable insight into illegal immigration from the immigrants point of view. The end was abrupt and unsatisfying... ( )

This book is visceral in its desire for maternal connection. So many children missing their mothers and some of those mothers missing their children. And then there are the mothers who disregard their children and those who are not privileged with the title of “mother” but who provide the love and security the children are seeking.

At the core of this book is the sudden separation of Serfina, a Mexican Indian woman is in the US illegally, from her 3 year old daughter Elvia. Serafina spend years and faces great difficulties to journey back to Elvia after her deportation back to a distant village in Mexico. During that time, Elvia believes that she was abandoned purposely and it informs her sense of self along with a deep well of longing to know her mother.

The many story lines revolve around this question of maternity and the search to be known and loved in such an elemental way. I found this to be such a juxtaposition from the harshness of the laws that separated Serafina from her daughter. The emotional and physical journey each of them takes is fraught with pain, wrapped in symbolism and driven by hope. Susan Straight writes beautifully about such difficult things. This novel deserves deep consideration and appreciation. ( )

[sigh:] I really wanted to like this book. I admire Susan Straight for writing about people and situations that nobody else will even touch, but you still have to have character development and a plot that doesn't depend on well-soaped coincidence. These are not real people, they are political stand-ins and they ultimately fall over like cardboard cutouts they are. ( )

Touching, well written acccount of a Mexican-Indian woman whose baby daughter is mistakenly left in the United States. The story is told from both the mother's and daughter's viewpoints. ( )

An illegal alien inadvertently abandons her toddler daughter when she is deported. The daughter goes through the foster care system and ends up with her white trash father. After twelve years the mother and daughter try to find each other.

There is no break in the unending misery of the characters in this novel. The author doesn’t believe in comic relief, obviously. Fiction does affect the mood of those who read it - I was depressed and in a funk while suffering through this novel.

The author knows her craft and does write well, but in my opinion the novel has several serious flaws.

* The constant melancholy tone and the incredible string of bad luck for the characters required me to force myself to finish the novel.
* Every major character has childhood trauma that they harp on constantly. This has become such a cliche in literary fiction. The character of the daughter, for instance, cannot have a single thought without relating it to the fact she was abandoned by her mother. This became excessively tiresome.
* The non-ending ending is a disaster. The author takes us to the brink of getting the mother and daughter back together, and then lacks the courage to go through with it. Instead she opts for a pseudo-sophisticated non-ending. Does this make sense? Tell a story, but stop just before the ending? A story without an ending is not a story.

Sorry if I am being harsh, but after suffering through the misery of this novel, I really have to speak my mind. Not a big surprise that this was a finalist for the National Book Award - the more of those novels I read the less is my opinion of that award.

www.samfsmith.com ( )