Overview

When Reyna Grande's father leaves his wife and three children behind in a village in Mexico to make the dangerous trek across the border to the United States, he promises he will soon return from El Otro Lado (The Other Side) with enough money to build them a dream house where they can all live together. His promises become harder to believe as months turn into years. When he summons his wife to join him, Reyna and her siblings are deposited in the already overburdened household of their stern, unsmiling grandmother. The three siblings are forced to look out for themselves; in childish games they find a way to forget the pain of abandonment and learn to solve very adult problems. When their mother at last returns, the reunion sets the stage for a dramatic new chapter in Reyna's young life: her own journey to El Otro Lado to live with the man who has haunted her imagination for years, her long-absent father. In this extraordinary memoir, award-winning writer Reyna Grande vividly brings to life her tumultuous early years, capturing all the confusion and contradictions of childhood, especially one spent torn between two parents and two countries. Elated when she feels the glow of her father's love and approval, Reyna knows that at any moment he might turn angry or violent. Only in books and music and her rich imaginary life does she find solace, a momentary refuge from a world in which every place feels like El Otro Lado.

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9781624606199

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Reviews

The charming story is beautifully written, and the characters are well developed. . . . West's novel is sweet and captivating.-- School Library Journal Grande consistently displays a fierce willingness to ask tough questions, accept startling answers, and candidly render emotional and physical violence. -- Kirkus Reviews The poignant yet triumphant tale Grande tells of her childhood and eventual illegal immigration puts a face on issues that stir vehement debate. -- Booklist Grande captivates and inspires in her memoir...Recounting her story without self-pity, she gracefully chronicles the painful results of a family shattered by repeated separations and traumas. -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) A brutally honest book...akin to being the Angela's Ashes of the modern Mexican immigrant experience. -- Los Angeles Times In this poignant memoir about her childhood in Mexico, Reyna Grande skillfully depicts another side of the immigrant experience-the hardships and heartbreaks of the children who are left behind. Through her brutally honest firsthand account of growing up in Mexico without her parents, Grande sheds light on the often overlooked consequence of immigration-the disintegration of a family. -- Sonia Nazario, Pulitzer Prize winner, and author of Enrique's Journey I've been waiting for this book for decades. -- Sandra Cisneros, USA Today bestselling author

Author Information

Reyna Grande is an award-winning novelist and memoirist. Her novel Across a Hundred Mountains received an American Book Award, and Dancing with Butterflies was the recipient of an International Latino Book Award. Reyna lives in Los Angeles. Tanya Eby is a novelist and an audiobook narrator who has earned several AudioFile Earphones Awards and been nominated for the Audie Award. She has a BA degree in English language and literature and an MFA in creative writing from the University of Southern Maine.

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