I have to admit off the bat that I struggled with this book before I even opened it. How is the "great modern SF novel of the immigrant experience" a novel by a white woman? I suppose the answer is: it came out in 2005. I imagine I would've engaged with this book differently in that respect, had I read it then. And it isn't the fault of those who loved it when they first read it that reading it in 2020, by some necessity, is a different experience from reading it in 2005.

But all of that aside, I simply found it difficult to keep my attention focused on the book. Palwick's concept is a fascinating one and it's a good riff on a pseudo-comic "Coming to America" kind of story -- a family is banished from their land through a portal that drops them in any number of ostensibly habitable worlds... and the world they end up in is Nevada in the early 2010s! HIJINKS! But things felt ~constructed~ the whole time and the relationships often felt uncomfortable, right down to the major plot mover of Jerry and Zama. There's a ghost, there's attempted religious conversion... and I finally had to put the book down about 140 pages in, having already abandoned and returned to it twice prior. Third strike, not for me.