Borderless
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Caught in the crosshairs of gang violence, a teen girl and her mother set off on a perilous journey from Guatemala City to the US border in this “engrossing” (Kirkus Reviews) young adult novel from the author of Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From.
For seventeen-year-old Maya, trashion is her passion, and her talent for making clothing out of unusual objects landed her a scholarship to Guatemala City’s most prestigious design school and a finalist spot in the school’s fashion show. Mamá is her biggest supporter, taking on extra jobs to pay for what the scholarship doesn’t cover, and she might be even more excited than Maya about what the fashion show could do for her future career.
So when Mamá doesn’t come to the show, Maya doesn’t know what to think. But the truth is worse than she could have imagined. The gang threats in their neighborhood have walked in their front door—with a boy Maya considered a friend, or maybe even more, among them. After barely making their escape, Maya and her mom have no choice but to continue their desperate flight all the way through Guatemala and Mexico in hopes of crossing the US border.
They have to cross. They must cross! Can they?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this heart-wrenching tale by De Leon (Don't Ask Me Where I'm From), gang violence forces a teen from her neighborhood in Guatemala. Sixteen-year-old Maya's love of trashion—incorporating repurposed and recycled materials into clothing—earns her a scholarship to Salomé Fashion Institute, an elite local academy. After showcasing her talents at school, she even makes a list of the year's top 10 designers, granting her entrance to design for Salomé's annual spring fashion show. But when her mother reveals her plan to move them from Guatemala City, and away from increasing gang violence, to San Marcos, Maya fears giving up everything she's worked so hard to achieve. The move will require her to withdraw from the fashion show, preventing her from obtaining the winner's prize money and opportunity to sell her designs to a boutique, and her budding romance with the cousin of a gang member is also on the line. Things get more complicated when Maya witnesses a murder, prompting Maya and her mom to flee to the U.S. Characters navigating conflicting loyalties imbue the narrative with an intense, edge-of-the-seat tone, but De Leon's strength lies in the novel's intimate and immediate prose, which sheds light on harsh realities surrounding structural financial precarity and forced migration. Ages 14–up.
