"Sometimes people disappear into the North and are never heard from again."
When her papá doesn't return, twelve-year-old Ixchel, a Maya from the Yucatan, resolves to leave home and make her way across the treacherous border into the United States to find him. Chel relies on an inexperienced smuggler and faces unknown dangers in a border tunnel.
Frightened, but resourceful, she is driven by hope, love for her father, and her dream of going to school.
December 15, 2022
A Mayan girl immigrates to the United States in this middle-grade novel. Twelve-year-old Ixchel is used to being away from her father, who works in California and occasionally comes home to M�rida, Mexico, where the tween's mother and grandmother are raising her. But the girl is not accustomed to him failing to answer her letters. When Ixchel's mother announces that she had a vision that the tween should join her father in the United States, the girl's world is upended. She slowly warms to the idea, and her friend Rosa, whose brother lives in Texas, decides to make the trip with her. The girls make their way to Tijuana, but the "coyote" whose name they were given has left, and they are stuck with his nephew, who is well intentioned but inexperienced. After a first attempt at crossing the border fails, he sends the girls through a tunnel, where Rosa gets caught by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Ixchel narrowly escapes an attacker. Ixchel makes her way to Los Angeles, but her father is not overjoyed to see her, and she discovers his new wife and baby. With help from the art dealer who sells her mother's weavings in his gallery, Ixchel and her father eventually reconcile, and she comes to terms with making a new life for herself in America. Patience tells a story of migration appropriate for young readers without being overly sanitized--for instance, the tension is palpable in Ixchel's confrontation with her attacker, and there is mild violence. But the overall danger level is low, and the book never goes into detail about the threats an unaccompanied girl would likely face. While the depictions of Yucatecan life are vivid and well researched, they are clearly written for an American audience ("Although hundreds of years have passed since the conquistadores came from Spain, we Yucatec Maya are still proud to speak our language"). The plot and pacing are solid, and the characters are well developed, making for an enjoyable and educational story for young readers. An engaging tale about family and migration.
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