It may be the sake sky, but we don't live the same lives. American's often forget how lucky we are to have been born here. This novel is a powerful examination of how many sacrifices immigrants make to reach the United States in search of the American Dream. Sadly,as this novel attests, what they face while on their journey to the land of milk and honey is the stuff of nightmares... ( )

Though the conclusion is predictable from the get-go, this tale of a Texas family longing for a baby juxtaposed with the desperate attempt of a 12-year-old Honduran girl striving to get to America with only her younger brother and her desperation to fuel the journey is not without its inherent charm.

Narration alternates between Alice, whose latest attempt at adoption has had a heartbreaking ending, and Carla, a Honduran girl cast adrift when her grandmother dies and leaves Carla and her younger brother, Junior, with few options. When Junior, at the tender age of six, is already drawn into the dead-end of drugs to mask the pain of his existence, Carla decides their only hope for survival is to try to reach her mother, who emigrated to Texas years before.

Of the two story strands, Carla's is certainly the more compelling. One can certainly empathize with Alice, grieving deeply at the loss of the baby she and her husband had hoped for so desperately, and whose marriage is also in jeopardy, they pale next to the matter-of-fact descriptions Carla lays out describing the brutality of her life in Honduras and on the journey.

Some of the characterization is a bit sketchy -- Alice has a brother-in-law who comes off as a total jerk with neither explanation for nor challenge to his attitudes. We never know what motivates Ernesto, whose presence enables Carla to begin her journey. Some of Carla's mother's actions -- primarily one which can't be discussed without a spoiler -- seem a bit strange. (And once the spoiler is revealed, it's done so without comment, explanation, or challenge.)

There's also a distracting and somewhat pointless sub-plot involving a neighborhood school, with both Alice and Jake reluctantly drawn into the life of a rebellious adolescent girl and into the principal's struggle to keep the school itself open.

Not everybody in this book gets a happy-ever-after, and those who don't pretty well drop off the page. One is left with perhaps more empathy for and understanding of the plight of the unaccompanied minors attempting to cross our southern border, but without any inkling as to how to address the issue either as an individual or a nation. ( )

Authors new book reviewed by NYT, this story sounded more interesting and had great Amazon reviews.

But. Although I read this quickly - the book isn’t long, and it’s broken into short chapters that swing between characters Alice and Carla - it was not very satisfying.

For me, it introduced a lot of interesting themes or situations, and really addressed very few of them. Especially for Alice. Does how she accepted cancer in her life influence how she deals with the problems of infertility and adoption failure? Was this affected by her mother’s death, her father’s nature, her sister’s life (and how she deals with the genetic cancer trait). Isn’t it contradictory that she is so in top of the cancer thing and seriously does not mentally prepare to handle Evian? It’s hard to say whether she has a communication issue with her husband - sometimes they seem to have problems, and other times not, like it’s okay to sweep it under the rug.

For Carla, it wasn’t so much an abundance of themes, it was more of the ‘reliance on God’s will’ that will save me that was unsatisfying. Maybe for an 11 year old that simplicity of hope and acceptance (instead of any kind of preparedness and planning) that is reasonable. It was a pretty big contrast to the Alice chapters though.

Maybe that’s what bothers me. There were a lot of great themes in this book, and they weren’t really resolved. Carla is rescued by Ernesto and then her mom. She gives up her baby and voila that solves the problem for Alice and Jake. All the other problems are still out there - being an illegal, Alice's relationship with her family, Evian. ( )

Alice is a middle-aged woman in Austin, Texas, married to Jake Conroe, of the famous Conroe's BBQ. Their marriage is happy and fulfilled but for one glaring lack: they have no children. Surrogates failed them; adoption has failed them; at the book's opening, they've just had an especially heartbreaking failure. Baby Kellan was in their home for a day and a night when the birth mother changed her mind. Alice and Jake's different ways of coping with this latest loss is putting some strain on their relationship.

Carla is a young Honduran girl whose mother has gone to the US to earn money and send it back to her family, leaving Carla and her younger brother with her own mother. When her grandmother dies, Carla, not yet twelve herself, struggles to protect herself and her brother in their increasingly dangerous, gang-controlled village. In the end, she decides she has no alternative but to take her brother on the dangerous journey to join her mother in Texas.

They tell their stories in alternating sections, relating what are for each of them the mundane details and incredible challenges of their daily lives, as well as the complex and sometimes confusing relationships they are a part of. Alice and Carla each become very real people, and I felt connected to each of them and to the people they care about. Austin is a place I and many other Americans have been, but Ward's writing makes the village of Tegucigalpa as real and present, and we feel Carla's love for and connectedness to her home as well as the fear and grief of what it is becoming.

We also experience Alice's complicated relationships with Jake's family, and her own, in both cases compounded by her childlessness. Jake's parents very much wanted grandchildren; Alice's sister Jane has three children and feels a little overwhelmed.

These two stories come together in an ending that is both satisfying and thoroughly earned.

Highly recommended.

I received a free electronic galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. ( )

I so enjoyed this book. It's the story of two lives intersecting on their own trajectories of loss, love, pain and hope. It shows how everything is related, how everything affects everything else, how much alike we all are in our profound differences. Faith and hope are the same for us all. ( )