About this item
The deeply reported story of identical twin brothers who escape El Salvador's violence to build new lives in California - fighting to survive, to stay, and to belong.Growing up in rural El Salvador in the wake of the civil war, the United States was a distant fantasy to identical twins Ernesto and Raul Flores - until, at age seventeen, a deadly threat from the region's brutal gangs forces them to flee the only home they've ever known. In this urgent chronicle of contemporary immigration, journalist Lauren Markham follows the Flores twins as they make their way across the Rio Grande and the Texas desert, into the hands of immigration authorities, and from there to their estranged older brother in Oakland, CA. Soon these unaccompanied minors are navigating school in a new language, working to pay down their mounting coyote debt, and facing their day in immigration court, while also encountering the triumphs and pitfalls of teenage life with only each other for support. With intimate access and breathtaking range, Markham offers an unforgettable testament to the migrant experience.NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW | WINNER OF THE RIDENHOUR BOOK PRIZE | SILVER WINNER OF THE CALIFORNIA BOOK AWARD | FINALIST FOR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE | SHORTLISTED FOR THE J. ANTHONY LUKAS BOOK PRIZE | LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/BOGRAD WELD PRIZE FOR BIOGRAPHY
About the Author
Lauren Markham is a writer and reporter based in Northern California. A fiction writer, essayist and journalist, her work most often concerns issues related to youth, migration, the environment and her home state of California. Markham is the author of The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life (Crown, September 2017) . The Far Away Brothers was the winner of the 2018 Ridenhour Book Prize, the Northern California Book Award, and a California Book Award Silver Prize. It was named a Barnes & Noble Discover Selection, a New York Times Book Critics' Top Book of 2017, and was shortlisted for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize and the L.A. Times Book Award and longlisted for a Pen America Literary Award in Biography. Her essays, fiction and journalism have appeared in outlets such as VQR (where she is aContributing Editor) , Harper's, The Guardian, The New Republic, Guernica, VICE, Mother Jones, Orion, The Atlantic, Lithub, California Sunday, Narrative Magazine, Pacific Standard, and on This American Life. She has been awared fellowships from The Mesa Refuge, UC Berkeley, Middlebury College, the McGraw Center, the French American Foundation, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. In addition to writing, Markham works as a part time administrator at a high school for immigrant youth in Oakland, California and teaches writing at the Ashland University MFA in Writing Program, Left Margin Lit, and the University of San Francisco.For updates, follow Lauren on Twitter: @LaurenMarkham_
