Book 2 of Aileen William’s Alki trilogy is the story of American student Carolyn who one night discovers hiding in the bushes Antonia, a young undocumented and homeless migrant girl from Central America. She takes her in and shelters her and their friendship blossoms. Through this relationship, the author explores issues of migration, particularly illegal immigration, empathetically and intelligently, and it’s a timely and thought-provoking novel. It’s a pleasant enough story, although hardly a work of significant literary fiction, with fairly superficial and sometimes sentimental characterisation, clunky dialogue – and rather too much of it – and a tendency to resort to melodrama on occasion. Nevertheless, it does give an informed portrait of the day-to-day reality of being undocumented and is in insight into an existence of which most of us will never have first-hand experience.