"Sometime in her twenties, Jennifer De Leon asked herself, "What would you do if you just gave yourself permission?" While her parents had fled Guatemala over three decades earlier when the country was in the grips of genocide and civil war, she hadn't been back since she was a child. She gave herself permission to return--to relearn the Spanish that she had forgotten, unpack her family's history, and begin to make her own way. Alternately honest,...

"Twelve-year-old Jaime makes the treacherous journey from his home in Guatemala to his older brother in New Mexico after his cousin is murdered by a drug cartel"--

Returning to his family's homeland after the death of his father, Nitido Aman, a Guatemalan-born man raised in the United States, is mistaken for a new local priest in his efforts to uncover family secrets.

Lola is anxious starting a new school in the middle of the school year, but her grandmother's advice helps her overcome her first day of school and adjust to the new school.

"Jaime Rivera pensó que después de cruzar México y entrar en Estados Unidos, lo peor había quedado atrás. No podía ser muy dificil comenzar en una escuela nueva. Pero lo es. Y no solamente porque casi no habla inglés. Mientras que su prima hermana Ángela se adaptó rapidamente e hizo nuevos amigos y se envolvió en actividades después de clases, Jaime siente que este lugar extraño no es su "hogar." Su hogar de verdad es con sus...