Across a Hundred Mountains
A Novel
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4.5 • 52 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the American Book Award, Across a Hundred Mountains is a “timely and riveting” (People) novel about a young girl who leaves her small town in Mexico to find her father, who left his family to work in America—a story of migration, loss, and discovery.
After a tragedy separates her from her mother, Juana García leaves in search of her father, who left them two years earlier. Out of money and in need of someone to help her across the border, Juana meets Adelina Vasquez, a young woman who left her family in California to follow her lover to Mexico. Finding themselves—in a Tijuana jail—in desperate circumstances, they offer each other much needed material and spiritual support and ultimately become linked forever in the most unexpected of ways.
In Across a Hundred Mountains, Reyna Grande puts a human face on the controversial issue of immigration, helping readers to better understand “the desperation of illegal immigrants and the families they leave behind” (Entertainment Weekly) in pursuit of a better life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Grande, a 2003 PEN Emerging Voices Fellow, turns in a topical and heartbreaking border story for her debut. Juana, 11, loses her baby sister in a flood, and the death sets off a chain of tragic events: her money-strapped father heads north from their small Mexican town for el otro lado; Juana's newborn baby brother is claimed by the town money lender; and Juana's mother descends into alcoholism and violence. At 14, Juana leaves to look for her father, from whom they have heard nothing. On her painstaking journey, she meets Adelina Vasquez, an American runaway working as a prostitute in Tijuana, who takes Juana in. The narrative switches off between young Juana's viewpoint, and that of Andelina, now 31 and a Los Angeles social worker, who returns to Mexico to find her own father and reunite with her mother. Grande's deft portraiture endows even the smallest characters with grace, and the two stories cross and re-cross in unexpected ways, driving toward a powerful conclusion.
Customer Reviews
10/10
I had to read this book for a class, but as I started reading it — it felt more of a leisure rather than an assignment. So many emotional roller coasters moments that made it hard to put down!
Love this book
At the beginning of the book I though it was ok. But if you haven't read it OMG I completely recommend it. The book is amazing, interesting, different. This book keep you reading, chapter back to back, no rest. I read it in 3 days no lies. I love it. Great book. 10 stars. <3
Awesome!!!
Amazing novel! Once you open it you can't close it!