About this item
In this astonishing true story award-winning journalist Sonia Nazario recounts the unforgettable odyssey of a Honduran boy who braves unimaginable hardship and peril to reach his mother in the United States When Enrique is five years old his mother Lourdes too poor to feed her children leaves Honduras to work in the United States The move allows her to send money back home to Enrique so he can eat better and go to school past the third grade Lourdes promises Enrique she will return quickly But she struggles in America Years pass He begs for his mother to come back Without her he becomes lonely and troubled When she calls Lourdes tells him to be patient Enrique despairs of ever seeing her again After eleven years apart he decides he will go find her Enrique sets off alone from Tegucigalpa with little more than a slip of paper bearing his motherrsquos North Carolina telephone number Without money he will make the dangerous and illegal trek up the length of Mexico the only way he canndashclinging to the sides and tops of freight trains With gritty determination and a deep longing to be by his motherrsquos side Enrique travels through hostile unknown worlds Each step of the way through Mexico he and other migrants many of them children are hunted like animals Gangsters control the tops of the trains Bandits rob and kill migrants up and down the tracks Corrupt cops all along the route are out to fleece and deport them To evade Mexican police and immigration authorities they must jump onto and off the moving boxcars they call El Tren de la MuertemdashThe Train of Death Enrique pushes forward using his wit courage and hopendashand the kindness of strangers It is an epic journey one thousands of immigrant children make each year to find their mothers in the United States Based on the Los Angeles Times newspaper series that won two Pulitzer Prizes one for feature writing and another for feature photography Enriquersquos Journey is the timeless story of families torn apart the yearning to be together again and a boy who will risk his life to find the mother he loves Praise for Enriquersquos Journey ldquoMagnificent Enriquersquos Journey is about love Itrsquos about family Itrsquos about homerdquomdashThe Washington Post Book World ldquoA searing report from the immigration frontlines as harrowing as it is heartbreakingrdquomdashPeople four stars ldquoStunning As an adventure narrative alone Enriquersquos Journey is a worthy read Nazariorsquos impressive piece of reporting turns the current immigration controversy from a political story into a personal onerdquomdashEntertainment Weekly ldquoGripping and harrowing a story begging to be toldrdquomdashThe Christian Science Monitor ldquoA prodigious feat of reporting Sonia Nazario is amazingly thorough and intrepidrdquomdashNewsday.
About the Author
Sonia Nazario (www.enriquesjourney.com) has spent 20 years reporting and writing about social issues, most recently as a projects reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Her stories have tackled some of this country's most intractable problems: hunger, drug addiction, immigration. She has won numerous national journalism and book awards and has been named among the most influential Latinos by Hispanic Business Magazine and a "trendsetter" by Hispanic Magazine. In 2012 Columbia Journalism Review named Nazario among "40 women who changed the media business in the past 40 years." In 2003, her story of a Honduran boy's struggle to find his mother in the U.S., entitled "Enrique's Journey," won more than a dozen awards, among them the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing, the George Polk Award for International Reporting, the Grand Prize of the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, and the National Assn. of Hispanic Journalists Guillermo Martinez-Marquez Award for Overall Excellence. Expanded into a book, Enrique's Journey became a national bestseller, won two book awards, and is required reading for all incoming freshmen at 21 universities and dozens of high schools nationwide. It has been selected as a "One City, One Book" read by five cities, and is being made into a movie by Lifetime. In 1998, Nazario was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for a series on children of drug addicted parents. And in 1994, she won a George Polk Award for Local Reporting for a series about hunger among schoolchildren in California. Nazario, who grew up in Kansas and in Argentina, has written extensively from Latin America and about Latinos in the United States. She is a graduate of Williams College and has a master's degree in Latin American studies from the University of California, Berkeley. She began her career at the Wall Street Journal, where she reported from four bureaus: New York, Atlanta, Miami, and Los Angeles. In 1993, she joined the Los Angeles Times. She is now at work on her second book.
