Into the Beautiful North by Luis Alberto Urrea

I chose to review this book because it's about Mexico and a young girl trying to sneak across the border to ask her father to return to her village. All the men have gone north looking for more money, and none have returned home...

Living in Las Cruces, NM, I'm not far from El Paso and Juarez, so I'm familiar with the border problems, the issues of illegal immigration, and just how poor the Mexicans are.

Since this book was written by a Mexican (who lives in Chicago), I thought I could gain some insight on how Mexicans view the US. I did. It wasn't different from what I expected, but I was amazed to see that they wanted a fence to keep the South Americans out of their land!

When drug traffickers move in and take over their town, the young girls in town decide to go to the states and bring back policeman and soldiers to their town to protect them. They also have a few ideas of marriage (after all, right now there no men in town except the drug runners), so if they happen to come back with a husband, that's good, too.

You feel their terror at trying to cross the border, see how easy it is for the young ones to become victims of wolves at the border, and their vision of brightness and beauty and heroes to save them becomes tarnished with time.

How the young girl finds her father is another hard journey, and she's disappointed by what she finds.

I'm giving away the ARC that I got for review. If you'd like to have this book, leave a comment here on the blog, and then email me at info@bookfaerie.com with your name and address for shipping. I'll choose a lucky winner next week.