Deborah Hopkinson

NonfictionWomen's HistoryBiography

You Don’t Belong Here

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

Award-winning journalist Elizabeth Becker turns her insightful gaze on three women who covered the Vietnam War in You Don’t Belong Here. Becker, who has firsthand experience of Southeast Asia and the challenges facing women in the field of journalism, begins her book with a personal anecdote. In 1973, while she was on her way to Cambodia to become a war correspondent at the age of 25, Becker met Kate Webb, a New Zealand-born Australian journalist who had survived capture by the North Vietnamese. Webb posed one question to the young reporter: Why had she crossed the ocean to cover a war?

Becker’s examination of three journalists’ careers—Webb, Frances FitzGerald from America and Catherine Leroy of France—powers this absorbing narrative about the challenges of covering the Vietnam War. As Becker explores the significance of these women’s legacies, she notes that “it took us decades to understand what we had accomplished as women on the front line of war.”

A few women (such as World War II reporter Martha Gellhorn, who stowed away on a hospital ship on D-Day) had done their best to report on wars in the past, but the United States military didn’t make it easy for women seeking to be war correspondents. Up until the war in Vietnam, women were forbidden on the battlefield. Even after that changed, news organizations still sent male journalists as a matter of course, with the result that most of the women covering the Vietnam War had to pay their own way and fight to stay.

Many of these barriers were eventually broken, thanks in part to the extraordinary women Becker profiles so adroitly here, combining their personal histories with the major events of the conflict. Leroy, a French photojournalist who died in 2006, was an experienced parachutist who used her skills to cover a parachute jump into combat and whose searing images appeared in Life magazine. Webb was one of the few journalists on the Navy command ship when the order to evacuate came, and she was able to file a report on April 30, 1975, the very day the war ended. FitzGerald later wrote a book about her experience on the ground, Fire in the Lake, which looked at the history of Vietnam and its people and won both the Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award.

As to the question Webb posed to the author, perhaps it was best answered by Leroy, who once said, “I wanted to be there, to see it happen.” You Don’t Belong Here is a significant contribution to the history of both the Vietnam War and women in journalism.

Award-winning journalist Elizabeth Becker turns her insightful gaze on three women who covered the Vietnam War in You Don’t Belong Here.
Children's & YAPicture Book

I Dream of Popo

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

A young girl stays in touch with her beloved grandmother, Popo, when her family moves to the United States from Taiwan in this exuberant picture book. Inspired by author Livia Blackburne’s personal experience of emigrating from Taiwan when she was 5 years old, the book also features the work of Taiwanese American illustrator Julia Kuo.

In plainspoken yet evocative first-person narration, the girl recalls her favorite memories of her grandmother, beginning from her babyhood: “I dream with Popo as she walks me in her arms.” Readers see the growing girl and Popo walking in the park, celebrating the new year with special foods and looking at a globe to find San Diego, where the girl moves with her parents. Even though they are apart, Popo remains part of the girl’s life as the two connect online, which is cleverly shown in a fun double-page spread of each person's screen, complete with the small reverse-camera image in the upper right-hand corner.

Kuo’s colors are bright and vibrant, while subtle details effectively capture the differences of daily life in the U.S. and Taiwan. Readers see Chinese characters on a wall calendar and the skyline of Taipei in the backdrop of the park. During their online video call, the protagonist eats a bowl of cereal for breakfast while Popo uses chopsticks to eat her dinner of noodles. In her new home, the young girl gradually adjusts and makes new friends, “kids with hair of every color and skin of every shade.”

Another clever spread shows two sheets of drawings the girl makes at school; she illustrates pictures of the English words she is learning alongside the Chinese characters. As she becomes more familiar with English, she begins to lose some of her first language, and its words become “hard to catch, like fish in a deep well.” But when they return to Taiwan for a visit, her mom reassures her that she can still hug Popo “as tight as before.”

I Dream of Popo balances the bittersweet experience of being separated from family with an affirmation of the enduring bond between grandmother and granddaughter. Its backmatter, which includes reflections and family photos from both the illustrator and author, adds context and depth to its depiction of the contemporary immigrant experience. This is a lyrical and heartfelt tribute to the power of love across geography and generations.

A young girl stays in touch with her beloved grandmother, Popo, when her family moves to the United States from Taiwan in this exuberant picture book.

NonfictionHistoryAmerican History

The Eagles of Heart Mountain

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

In his engrossing and accomplished debut work of nonfiction, The Eagles of Heart Mountain: A True Story of Football, Incarceration, and Resistance in World War II America, Bradford Pearson shines light on a little-known chapter of World War II resistance on the homefront. He sets the stage by confronting the inaccurate vocabulary used to describe the forcible relocation of 120,000 people of Japanese descent in the 1940s, rejecting the commonly used “internment” in favor of the more accurate term “incarceration.”

Pearson’s story revolves around the Eagles, the high school football team of a Japanese incarceration camp located near Heart Mountain, outside of Cody, Wyoming. In the fall of 1943, in its inaugural season, the football team went undefeated against neighboring high schools. Based on meticulous archival research and interviews with surviving family members, Pearson’s narrative provides the political context for the incarceration of Japanese civilians while bringing readers into the lives of several of the teens who came of age in the camp, including Ted Fujioka, George “Horse” Yoshinaga and his best friend, Tamotsu “Babe” Nomura.

Pearson’s tale goes beyond a simple feel-good sports story to encompass the complex political and racial justice issues of the time. In early 1944, for example, after the War Department reinstated the draft for second-generation Japanese men, 63 men imprisoned at Heart Mountain were put on federal trial and found guilty for their decision to resist the draft unless their rights as American citizens were restored.

Pearson weaves this legal fight with the experiences and fates of the young Eagles both during and after World War II. Some went to war, such as Fujioka, who was killed fighting in France. Yoshinaga became a journalist and sports promoter. Nomura returned to California, where he had once been the starting halfback on his high school football team. In December of 1945, he was touted for his impressive reputation on the Los Angeles City College football team as the “nation’s top Japanese-American gridster”—a headline unthinkable only two years before.

The Eagles of Heart Mountain is an inspiring exploration of resistance and a timely examination of how the policy of Japanese incarceration impacted the lives of young people and their families.

The Eagles of Heart Mountain is an inspiring exploration of resistance and a timely examination of how the policy of Japanese incarceration impacted the lives of young people and their families.

NonfictionHistoryEuropean History

Paper Bullets

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

Although it’s been 75 years since the end of World War II, accounts that reveal the resilience of ordinary individuals in the face of the Nazi regime continue to emerge into the historical record. In Paper Bullets: Two Artists Who Risked Their Lives to Defy the Nazis, Jeffrey H. Jackson, a Rhodes College professor specializing in European history, unearths the fascinating story of two women, Lucy Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe, whose “resistance activity grew organically out of life-long patterns of fighting against the social norms of their day.”

After 20 years of immersion in the art scene of Paris, Lucy, a photographer and writer who published under the name Claude Cahun, and Suzanne, an illustrator whose professional pseudonym was Marcel Moore, found themselves under German occupation on Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands. The two women had retreated there in 1937 out of concern for Lucy’s chronic health problems, posing as sisters to hide their true relationship.

Jackson links the women’s involvement in resistance work to their personal experiences as artists and lesbians whose lives constantly put them at odds with expectations placed on them as the daughters of wealthy families in France. These expectations included gender identity and expression, which they explored in both their personal lives and art as a fluid spectrum between masculinity, androgyny and femininity. Jackson’s previous works include Making Jazz French: Music and Modern Life in Interwar Paris, and he is adept at bringing the vibrancy of 1920s and 1930s Paris to life, including the cafes, nightclubs and personalities that were part of the thriving gay and lesbian community to which Lucy and Suzanne belonged.

This carefully researched volume also includes fascinating photographs, artwork and excerpts from the women’s letters and articles. The author’s attention to detail and prodigious research skills are also on display as he recounts the saga of the German occupation of Jersey and the women’s growing determination to do something to resist.

They began small enough, ripping down German posters and announcements and making graffiti. They also created their own anti-Nazi artwork and slipped subversive messages (the eponymous “paper bullets”) onto the windshields of police cars or into the pages of German-language magazines on local newsstands. Their efforts at fomenting doubt among the occupying forces escalated, eventually leading to their arrest, imprisonment in solitary confinement and a dramatic trial in which they were sentenced to death in November of 1944. Their sentence was later commuted, but they remained confined until the war ended.

The final section of Paper Bullets details these women's postwar lives. Lucy died in 1954, Suzanne in 1972. In an epilogue entitled “Why Resist?” Jackson addresses some of the issues that led to the women’s commitment to the cause of freedom. Their story, he notes, “invites us to look at a history of the war from the bottom up, to think about the complexities of ground-level responses to conquest.” Impeccably researched and meticulously sourced, Paper Bullets is a welcome and timely portrait of courage and creativity.

Although it’s been 75 years since the end of World War II, accounts that reveal the resilience of ordinary individuals in the face of the Nazi regime continue to emerge into the historical record. In Paper Bullets: Two Artists Who Risked Their Lives to Defy…

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

The Way Past Winter

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

The Way Past Winter quickly draws young readers into the magical world of a mysterious, frozen north, where Mila lives with her parents and her siblings, Sanna and Oskar. Their mother, who loves to spin tales of an ancient forest spirit called the Bear, dies giving birth to a baby daughter, Pípa. Five years later, devastated by grief, the children’s father walks into the snowy wilderness and isn't seen again.

Then Oskar disappears after a group of strangers visits their hut, but Mila is convinced he has not gone willingly. Mila and her sisters set out in their dog-drawn birch sleigh to track him, only to discover that other boys in the nearby town, including Sanna’s friend Geir, are missing, too. Bretta, the town’s jarl (a kind of ruler), believes the boys have been lured away by adventure and the promise of money. Most of the townsfolk agree—except for Rune, a mage, herbalist and storyteller. Rune tells Mila that Oskar and the others have been taken by the Bear, who becomes angry when trees are cut down. With no time to waste, Rune, Mila and Pípa set off on a dangerous rescue mission. To save her brother, Mila will have to muster all her courage to confront the Bear—and come to a new understanding of what it means to call the forest her home in order to guard and protect it for the future.

Author Kiran Millwood Hargrave paints her wintery world with poetic, lyrical prose. Her story’s complex magical elements never detract from the page-turning adventure and underlying themes of sibling relationships, responsibility and love of the natural world. The Way Past Winter is a winning and memorable combination of classical fantasy and a call for environmental activism.

The Way Past Winter quickly draws young readers into the magical world of a mysterious, frozen north, where Mila lives with her parents and her siblings, Sanna and Oskar.

NonfictionBiographyAmerican History

Eleanor

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

Fueled by 11 years of research, the new biography of Eleanor Roosevelt by David Michaelis, New York Times bestselling author of N. C. Wyeth, is both compelling and comprehensive, making use of previously untapped archival sources and interviews. It seems no accident that Michaelis chooses as his leading epithet this quote from the nation’s most formidable and longest serving first lady: “I felt obliged to notice everything.” In the same way, her biographer, who actually met Roosevelt when he was just 4 years old, trains his careful attention on virtually all aspects of her incredible life and times to craft a fast-moving, engrossing narrative.

Eleanor follows its subject from birth to her death in 1962. Michaelis sets the stage by providing a list of principal characters, then presents Roosevelt’s life in seven parts designed to reflect the myriad roles she played in her transformation from an awkward child into a force of nature. Roosevelt’s life journey took her from a shy, often ignored child, whose mother shamed her with the nickname “Granny,” to a dynamic first lady and then a “world maker” when, as one of the country’s first delegates to the United Nations, she spearheaded the adoption of the first Universal Declaration of Human Rights in history.

Of course, Eleanor Roosevelt’s life was entwined with that of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Eleanor was so intrinsically linked with the New Deal and World War II, it’s sometimes easy to forget that she was born in 1884 and was almost 36 years old when the 19th Amendment passed in 1920. That was one year before the summer when FDR contracted polio, altering both their lives in profound ways.

Michaelis never neglects the politics and history that marked the life of this remarkable, fascinating woman. At the same time, his impeccable storytelling and seamless integration of dialogue and quotations allow him to create an intimate, lively and emotional portrait that unfolds like a good novel. The book is also meticulously sourced, with nearly 100 pages of notes and a 30-page bibliography that’s of interest to historians as well as general readers.

One of the pleasures of this biography is Michaelis’ firm grasp of the material and his ability to sprinkle the text with anecdotes and tidbits that capture Roosevelt’s personality, complex private relationships and public accomplishments. We learn, for instance, that as first lady she traveled 38,000 miles in 1933 and kept up this grueling pace, logging 43,000 miles in 1937. He writes, “Never before had a president’s wife set out on her own to assess social and economic conditions or . . . visited a foreign country unaccompanied by the President.”

Roosevelt once reflected, “You have to accept whatever comes, and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best you have to give.” As America faces another challenging period in its history, there may be no better time for readers to turn to the life of one of our nation’s truly great leaders for inspiration.

Fueled by 11 years of research, the new biography of Eleanor Roosevelt by David Michaelis, New York Times bestselling author of N. C. Wyeth, is both compelling and comprehensive, making use of previously untapped archival sources and interviews. It seems no accident that Michaelis…
Children's & YAMiddle Grade

All He Knew

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

In this luminous middle grade novel, Michael L. Printz Honor author Helen Frost mines family history to explore the little-known experiences of children in state-run psychiatric institutions in mid-20th-century America. Artistic and bright, Henry was born hearing but became deaf after an illness in early childhood. At first, Henry continues to speak to his loving older sister, Molly, as well as to his parents, but the teasing and bullying of others soon silence him.

When his parents seek professional help, a school for the deaf deems Henry “unteachable,” and he is sent instead to Riverview, a deplorable institution. There, Henry develops close friendships with two other boys; despite mistreatment, he manages to maintain his compassionate nature and his humanity. Henry’s life changes for the better when, after the U.S. enters World War II, a conscientious objector named Victor is assigned to Riverview.

Henry’s story unfolds in plainspoken yet evocative third-person free verse that brings the story’s setting to life. For instance, when he arrives at Riverview, Henry reacts most strongly to its awful smell, a combination that includes “something like potatoes / forgotten in a corner of the kitchen.” Victor’s portion of the narrative includes epistolary poems in sonnet form that add context to Henry’s experiences as well as to the time period. The relationship that develops between Molly and Victor—also told through letters—is especially lovely as the two young people work together to improve Henry’s life.

Although Frost’s subject is weighty, she handles it with skilled sensitivity. All He Knew is a significant and poignant exploration of a difficult moment in American history and serves as a loving tribute to the young people whose experiences it brings to light.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Helen Frost shares her personal connection to the story of All He Knew.

All He Knew is a significant and poignant exploration of a difficult moment American history and serves as a loving tribute to the young people whose experiences it brings to light.
Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Pine Island Home

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

Stories of orphans making it on their own and finding family are a staple of children’s literature, and Newbery Honor author Polly Horvath’s Pine Island Home has an old-fashioned feel. It’s a comforting coming-of-age tale about four sisters whose missionary parents are killed in a tsunami. Their great-aunt Martha agrees to take them in, but when Fiona and her younger sisters, Marlin, Natasha and Charlie, arrive on Pine Island, they discover Martha has just died.

The sisters move into her house anyway. Determined to keep her family together, Fiona negotiates with Al, the eccentric and often inebriated writer who lives on the property adjacent to Martha’s. He agrees to pretend to be their guardian in exchange for beer money and dinners cooked by budding chef Marlin.

Horvath (One Year in Coal Harbor, The Night Garden) is a master at creating winning characters, and each sister emerges as a distinct individual. In particular, Fiona is a study in resilience, shouldering the burden of financial responsibility and the insistent emails from their great-aunt’s attorney. The girls’ efforts at self-sufficiency are appealing, as are the cast of townsfolk and the bucolic setting, as the sisters discover that families can be created in surprising ways.

Stories of orphans making it on their own and finding family are a staple of children’s literature, and Newbery Honor author Polly Horvath’s Pine Island Home has an old-fashioned feel. It’s a comforting coming-of-age tale about four sisters whose missionary parents are killed in a…

Nonfiction

The Last Stargazers

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

Emily Levesque, an astronomy professor at the University of Washington, trains her gaze on humans’ fascination with the stars in this engaging look at the field of astronomy and its practitioners who strive to enrich our understanding of the universe. Like many astronomers, Levesque traces her determination to study space to early childhood, when as a toddler in 1986 she caught a glimpse of Halley’s comet through the family’s backyard telescope. From that moment on, Levesque was hooked, even though she had little notion of precisely what professional astronomers do—or the obstacles she might encounter as a young female researcher in a male-dominated field. 

In her first book for a general audience, Levesque sets out to illuminate her chosen field, often using humorous or dramatic personal anecdotes to explicate the research process, the history of astronomy and how telescopes actually work. This is no dry technical narrative. Levesque knows how to tell a story, and her conversational style and clear, easygoing prose bring readers into the action, whether it’s her own first experience of a total eclipse or another astronomer’s discovery of a supernova with the naked eye. Readers will learn what it takes to be granted access to a single night of observation at one of the world’s premier telescopes or to ride along in NASA’s flying SOFIA telescope—and what happens when things go wrong. This is also an introduction to the community of astronomers working today, many of whom Levesque interviewed for her book and whose stories help make her narrative shine. She even devotes a section to how technology may change the field for future astronomers. 

While astronomy is an incredibly precise and technical field, the professional astronomers Levesque interviewed could almost always link their desire to explore the universe to a vivid moment of awe and wonder. Something, Levesque concludes, “drives us to reach outward and upward into the vast cosmos before us simply because we must.” Immensely informative and inspiring, The Last Stargazers: The Enduring Story of Astronomy’s Vanishing Explorers is the perfect complement to a summer night under the stars.

Emily Levesque, an astronomy professor at the University of Washington, trains her gaze on humans’ fascination with the stars in this engaging look at the field of astronomy and its practitioners who strive to enrich our understanding of the universe. Like many astronomers, Levesque traces…

Children's & YAPicture Book

Saving Lady Liberty

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

We may think of crowdfunding as a contemporary innovation of our social media age, but in their impressive nonfiction picture book Saving Lady Liberty: Joseph Pulitzer’s Fight for the Statue of Liberty, author Claudia Friddell and illustrator Stacy Innerst celebrate the 19th-century campaign of Hungarian immigrant and self-made publishing icon Joseph Pulitzer to raise more than $100,000 for the Statue of Liberty.

Friddell traces Pulitzer’s early life and struggles as a newcomer to America, but focuses mainly on his efforts to use the pages of his newspaper, the New York World, to launch a public awareness and fundraising campaign for Lady Liberty. In 1884, when funds for the statue’s pedestal ran dry, Pulitzer scolded wealthy New Yorkers for their lack of support and used the New York World to make an appeal to the masses. More than 120,000 people responded, and Pulitzer fulfilled his promise to print all their names in his newspaper. Over a million people attended the dedication and unveiling ceremony of the statue in October of 1886.

Innerst’s sepia-toned illustrations evoke the book’s late 19th-century setting and make effective use of design elements, including newspaper headlines and examples of delightful handwritten letters that accompanied small donations from children. A boy named Mark sold “two pumpkins and one squash at the market this morning” and sent along 10 cents. There’s even a humorous note from the dog, a forerunner to today’s trend of canine social media stars.

Historians young and old will appreciate the book’s extensive back matter, which includes an afterword, timeline, a wonderful selection of historical photographs, facts about Pulitzer and the Statue of Liberty, a bibliography and online resources.

Inspiring and well executed, Saving Lady Liberty is a timely reminder of the power of ordinary people to exemplify the best American ideals.

We may think of crowdfunding as a contemporary innovation of our social media age, but in their impressive nonfiction picture book Saving Lady Liberty: Joseph Pulitzer’s Fight for the Statue of Liberty, author Claudia Friddell and illustrator Stacy Innerst celebrate the 19th-century campaign of Hungarian…

NonfictionHistoryAmerican History

Union

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of the bestselling American Nations Colin Woodard tackles the evolution of ideas about America’s nationhood leading up to the Civil War in Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood. Part biography, part political and intellectual history, Union chronicles the tumultuous clash of regional cultures and competing visions of America’s destiny through the lives, writings and ideas of five very different men.

In 1817, future historian and diplomat George Bancroft had graduated from Harvard and was heading to Germany for further study. Attending a school at the bottom of the rung was his future rival, author William Gilmore Simms of South Carolina, who became an avid proponent of slavery and secession. Sometime in February of 1818, Freddy Bailey was born into slavery in Maryland. If that name isn’t familiar, it’s because he later assumed the name Frederick Douglass after becoming a fugitive in Massachusetts in 1838. Douglass soon made a name for himself as a powerful orator for the cause of equality, both in America and on his famous 1846 visit to Britain, where English abolitionists purchased his freedom legally.

In the following years, both Douglass and Bancroft met with Lincoln. These sections are some of the most powerful of the book. (It was Bancroft who asked Lincoln to write out a copy of the Gettysburg Address, now considered the definitive version and preserved in the Library of Congress.) While Douglass pressed Lincoln for equality, Simms and others in the South set forth to find ways “to dispossess” formerly enslaved people, wrenching efforts at reconstruction away from the federal government.

As the narrative moves into Reconstruction and beyond, Woodard focuses on two other figures: Woodrow Wilson, who influenced the creation of a federal government that “actively resisted making diversity an official part of American life,” and Frederick Jackson Turner, a scholar best known for his “frontier thesis,” tracing the role of westward expansion in shaping American values and democracy.

This choice of narrative structure makes for a fascinating journey through history. However, given the centurylong time frame, chapter titles and defined sections might have added welcome context. It’s also worth noting that not much attention is paid to women’s contributions.

In the end, though, Union is timely and thought-provoking, accomplishing much more than a static history. In an author’s note dated December 2019, Woodard writes that several paths lie before us and that “the survival of the United States is at stake in the choices we make about which one to follow.”

Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of the bestselling American Nations Colin Woodard tackles the evolution of ideas about America’s nationhood leading up to the Civil War in Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood. Part biography, part political and intellectual history, Union…

Children's & YAPicture Book

Prairie Days

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

Evoking the setting of author Patricia MacLachlan’s Newbery Medal-winning classic, Sarah, Plain and Tall, Prairie Days is a vibrant celebration of daily life on a prairie farm. The simple but lyrical narrative follows a young girl through her memories of summer under “a sky so big, there was no end of it.” Although a precise date isn’t provided, elements in the illustrations—such as the designs of cars, a scene at a filling station and an old locomotive by a granary—suggest a bygone era, perhaps the early 1940s. 

The unnamed narrator shares recollections of horses, who pulled plows and wagons, and farm dogs, including herders Bucky and Prince, “brave dogs who ate well and slept well and loved their work.” She takes dips in the farm’s pond and excursions to the general store to buy cloth, tools, pencils and penny mints. The natural world is omnipresent, manifesting itself in wild roses and hollyhocks, grouse and magpies, herds of sheep and howling coyotes.  

The book’s large, wide format creates a fitting canvas for spectacular art by illustrator Micha Archer. Her images combine collage illustrations done with acrylics and inks with original textured papers to form a kaleidoscope of brilliant colors. While the intricate, sweeping landscapes of open fields and big skies are a feast for the eyes, Archer also excels in depicting minute details. The general store, for example, features old kitchen utensils, brightly patterned bolts of fabric and enticing jars of candy, and the lace curtains in the girl’s bedroom almost seem to swing in a real breeze. The end result is breathtaking on almost every spread, and Prairie Days is certain to be ranked among the most beautifully illustrated picture books of the year.

As the day and the story come to a close, the girl nestles with a flashlight under a quilt, blank paper before her—a clever acknowledgment that her day, unlike other childhood memories lost to time, will live on through her words and pictures.

Evoking the setting of author Patricia MacLachlan’s Newbery Medal-winning classic, Sarah, Plain and Tall, Prairie Days is a vibrant celebration of daily life on a prairie farm. The simple but lyrical narrative follows a young girl through her memories of summer under “a sky so big,…

NonfictionMemoir

The Book of Rosy

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

“We are last names only. We are numbers.” From the first page of this account of a mother from Guatemala being separated from her sons at the southern U.S. border, readers are drawn into the wrenching impact of American immigration policy on parents and children. 

The Book of Rosy chronicles the experiences of Rosayra Pablo Cruz, a shop owner, writer and mother of four. After the murder of her husband and a shooting attempt on her life, Cruz fled Guatemala in 2014, leaving her three oldest children behind with her mother. After gangs threatened to kidnap her eldest son, Yordy, she returned. Cruz made another attempt to flee in April 2018 with 15-year-old Yordy and Fernando, age 5.

Cruz describes making the 2,300-mile journey over eight days and nights, packed in the back of a truck with other refugees. In an ICE detention center in Arizona, officials separated her from Yordy and placed her with Fernando in a frigid cell. Within days, she was informed her sons would be sent to a different facility, a transfer that took place at 2 a.m. Yordy and Fernando ended up far away, placed with a Spanish-speaking foster mother in the Bronx. Eventually, the efforts of Immigrant Families Together, a group of activist mothers who raise money to post bond for detainees like Cruz, reunited her with her sons.

Interspersed with Cruz’s story is Julie Schwietert Collazo’s account of her 2018 decision, in response to the Trump administration’s family separation policy, to establish a grassroots group that would become Immigrant Families Together. The group has worked to reunite more than 80 families. 

Simultaneously published in Spanish and English, The Book of Rosy offers an unflinching look at conditions in U.S. detention centers and a sobering reminder of the power of policy to change the course of lives. 

“We are last names only. We are numbers.” From the first page of this account of a mother from Guatemala being separated from her sons at the southern U.S. border, readers are drawn into the wrenching impact of American immigration policy on parents and children. 

…

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