Evan, the nephew of a conservative southern senator, and Alma, who lives with her large, warm Mexican family, fall in love, but when Immigration and Customs Enforcement begins raids on their town, Alma knows she needs to tell Evan her secrets, but how can she tell her country-club boyfriend that she is an undocumented immigrant?

On the cusp of adulthood, a 17-year-old girl escapes her abusive home and discovers a refuge in a sleepy Arizona town. Two weeks have passed since Nana's funeral. Her absence still feels raw to Lucy Sanchez, a Mexican American girl who has inherited her grandmother's love for and knowledge of cooking. Home offers little solace. Lucy's mother is a ghost of her former self; her father, meanwhile, is a violent tyrant. When Lucy's brother, Mario, arrives...

"This is an apprenticeship novel, the story of Isabel Cooper, 17, and her 15-year-old brother, Frederick. In early 1911, they leave their Georgetown home after the sudden death of their Mexican mother. They are determined to find their father, a college professor who - like many American leftists - had joined the Mexican revolution a few months earlier. They travel by train, stagecoach, and wagon, at first put off by what they see of turn-of-the-century...