I would recommend this book to just about anyone. No matter where they were born and what mistakes they make along the way. It was a reminder that these children are just that, children, and that they deserve a chance to thrive, and not merely survive. I felt connected to the twins and their personal struggles in a way that humanized children that flee their hometowns to find a better life for themselves and their families. I felt I learned so much, and understood the immigration situation, especially that of unaccompanied minors much better. Markham also examines how America has been involved in helping to create the instability in Central America, and what responsibility America has to right their wrongs?

We look at the choice to leave home, and how in the face of fear for one’s life, that that choice is less of a choice, and more of an ultimatum. She looks at the economic instability and violence that prompts people to leave home. Both life in these Central American countries, and life upon coming to America. The story of how this crisis started, how it has evolved, and how dangerous it has all become.

She uses this story as a jumping off point to tell a much bigger story. Some of the things they go through are harrowing and spirit breaking, and we follow them as they navigate that. We watch them as they navigate life away from home and family in a whole new world, El Norte. We experience their failures and triumphs, their pain and their joy. In the small sense we follow a set of Salvadorian twins as they leave home and move to California. This book is a fascinating look at the current immigration situation in Central America.

immigration policy, and an unforgettable testament to the migrant experience. With intimate access and breathtaking range, Markham offers a coming of age tale that is also a nuanced portrait of Central America’s child exodus, an investigation of U.S. Soon these unaccompanied minors are navigating a new school in a new language, working to pay down their mounting coyote debt, and facing their day in immigration court, while also encountering the triumphs and pitfalls of life as American teenagers-girls, grades, Facebook-with only each other for support. In this urgent chronicle of contemporary immigration, journalist Lauren Markham follows the seventeen-year-old Flores twins as they make their harrowing journey across the Rio Grande and the Texas desert, into the hands of immigration authorities, and from there to their estranged older brother’s custody in Oakland, CA. If you’re like me and knew nothing about this book before now, here is a little intro to the story However, I decided that I would be focusing on reading a little more about immigration this month, and decided why not dive into this book. I heard about this book from Subway Book Review on Instagram and I added it to my TBR (to be read) list thinking I would get to it eventually.

The Far Away Brothers by Lauren Markham