Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC of this amazing book, The Far Away Brothers
A wonderful book, written by an articulate and thoughtful author.
This is the story of two brothers leaving their dangerous country and coming to the US, specifically Oakland, California and finding help when things start going South.
Anyone who wants to know about the immigrant experience for young people with no means of support or means to get an education should read this book.

THE FAR AWAY BROTHERS by Lauren Markham is a narrative non-fiction work which tells the story of "Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life." Twin seventeen year-old brothers, Ernesto and Raul Flores, flee dangerous gang threats in El Salvador and attempt to start a life in California. As the publisher says, they are "fighting to survive, to stay, and to belong." After paying a coyote and travelling through the desert, they ultimately reach an older brother in San Jose, and then move to Oakland, where they enroll in high school and apply for eligibility for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status.

Markham has spent over a decade working in refugee resettlement and immigrant education and she weaves numerous facts into the Flores brothers' story. Many, particularly those related to violence and femicide in El Salvador, are shocking and difficult to read. As just one example, Amnesty International reported in 2010 that 6 out of 10 migrant woman and girls were sexually assaulted en route to the United States. Markham discusses potential policy shifts and the moral and pragmatic implications of the situation in her afterword which is accompanied by numerous sources and followed by a comprehensive index.

THE FAR AWAY BROTHERS received a starred review from Kirkus; this year we are planning to booktalk it as a possible text for interested students to read for Junior Theme. I can see supplementing this title with excerpts from Tell Me How It Ends or perhaps contrasting it with a fictional work such as A Radius of Us or Lucky Boy or Behold the Dreamers.

Links in live post:
https://www.npr.org/2017/04/06/521791352/tell-me-how-it-ends-offers-a-moving-humane-portrait-of-child-migrants
http://treviansbookit.blogspot.com/2017/01/a-radius-of-us-by-marie-marquardt.html
http://treviansbookit.blogspot.com/2017/01/lucky-boy-by-shanthi-sekaran.html
http://treviansbookit.blogspot.com/2016/08/behold-dreamers-by-imbolo-mbue.html

Thanks to NetGalley for the free digital ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. Check out all my book reviews at www.myliterary2cents.blogspot.com

My star rating system:
1 star – Awful! I couldn’t even read it.
2 stars – I only read part of it, couldn’t finish it.
3 stars – I read it all, and it was okay – not one of my favorites.
4 stars – I read it all and loved it!
5 stars – I read it all, loved it, and I would read it again!

I would actually give this book a 3.5. I did really enjoy it. It wasn't one of those books that I just couldn't put down, so that's why I didn't give it a 4. There were parts that got a little redundant, and I skipped parts.

Author Lauren Markham was an administrator at a Californian school for newly arrived immigrants and also a journalist. She tells the story twin boys from El Salvador who immigrated to the US when they were 17. Ms. Markham goes into amazing detail about the Flores boys' families in El Salvador, their harrowing trip to the US, their experiences in US immigrant court, and their experience in an American school and culture.

When I saw that this book was available for review from NetGalley, I knew I had to read it. I read it after my first year as an ESL teacher. Several of my students were from El Salvador. I knew from my students that El Salvador was an extremely dangerous country, but reading this book gave me more insight into why these people feel the need to do almost anything in order to escape their country.

This book was written from the point of view of many would-be immigrants to the US shortly during and after the Trump election. It was very interesting to hear what people in theses countries felt about what they had heard about the president (and Americans in general) during this time.

This book is a must-read for anyone who works with immigrants, especially for those who work with immigrants from Mexico and Central America.