Across a Hundred Mountains

Review: Across a Hundred Mountains by Reyna Grande.

This is a well written, descriptive stunning story about migration, loss, and discovery. Many people in our world don’t understand the reasons behind illegal immigration but this book gives great insight into what pushes people to risk their lives and leave their families trying to make it across the border.

Immigration is an extreme issue here in the United States so this book gives us a chance to walk in those people’s shoes striving to restore their former lives and put together a broken family. Some might feel that the book is confusing at the beginning with the switching perspectives of tackling the immigration issues however, the author also establishes a great fiction show more storyline that keeps the reader interested and at the end it all comes together and makes a lot of sense.

The story is about Juana and her family’s physical and economical challenges they were going through. Juana was introduced as young girl who also had psychological issues starting from the time her sister died and her father leaving the family for the United States. Then it goes on to where she feels her whole world was falling apart because she had been held responsible for what they were going through so she decides to go looking for her father after a vast amount of time had passed with no word from him. It was also Juana’s last glimmer of hope to restore her mother’s love and affection. Juana goes through extreme measures to try and restore her family which makes the story more captivating and emotional.

It’s a good fast pace book which address a worthy subject of the desperation of illegal immigrants and their families they leave behind….. show less

This is a debut novel by Reyna Grande. I love discovering new authors! I can only imagine the Reyna Grande enhanced the story by using some of her personal life to shape this story. When Reyna was 5 years old her parents immigrated to the United States and left her and her siblings in the care of their grandmother. At the age of nine, Reyna immigrated to the United States to be with her parents. She currently resides in Los Angeles. Author’s Website is http://www.reynagrande.com/

My Review: This book was recommended to by my friend, Syd. I thought the writing was good. The book was engaging and had a good flow to the story. The descriptions of life in Mexico were interesting and heartbreaking. I felt a bit confused in the middle of the show more story by the alternating chapters by the two women, Juana and Adelina. The author quickly brings it all together and it all makes perfect sense. Once everything started to come together, I had a hard time putting the book down. Once again I stayed up too late reading!
4/5 – Recommended/ A Good Read. show less

Although I find the writer very clear at expressing thoughts, I have two reasons for not rating this novel higher.

First, during the first third of the book, all the character's names or nicknames start with 'A" or "J" and I could not keep them straight, even 50 pages into the book.

Secondly, the story is so grim that the goal, even if reached, does not seem to be worth it, so why read the book?

On the plus side, the ending is very unique and I remember that part very well, and will for a ling time.

The regular version is not fit for children due to the endless cruelty. The Young Adult version I have not read but the internet shows it as the same page length so must still have all that cruelty.

Probably the best use of this book is to get a show more detailed view of what it is like to live on the other side of the border, to try to cross the border and to try to live in the United States without parental encouragement of financial help either at home or in the states. However for that purpose I recommend the author's nonfiction, her own memoir. That one also has a more pleasant journey towards a dream. Because the memoir is true, the author has not fully reached her goals so the ending in the memoir is not quite as dramatic as in the novel, but more worthwhile given the circumstances encountered by the real person of the memoir and the novel's main character. show less

Painful subject matter - two young women who search across the Mexico/US border for their fathers and for forgiveness. Juana is only 12 when her father leaves for "el otro lado" (the other side); when he hasn't returned in three years she sets out to find him. Adelina is am American running from a bad situation at home and now working as a prostitute in Tijuana. The girls meet up and try to help one another. Compelling story, but the author needs to work on her craft.

This book begins with a very haunting image which stayed with me throughout the entire story & which I can't elaborate on without giving too much away. Though the story does deal with illegal immigration across the US/Mexican border, I didn't look at that as the main theme of this book. The interweaving of stories from opposite angles gives the reader an interesting perspective. The writing style was simple -- I thought maybe almost too simple at times, although it was somewhat refreshing not to have to think too academically while reading, and I enjoyed the short chapters, allowing brief glimpses into each character's emerging plotline.

Once I picked up this book, I was completely enthralled by story of two women with two completely different stories ending up meeting and being connected. It opened my eyes to poverty illegal immigration, and the "real" American dream.

Across a Hundred Mountains combines the narration of Juana, a young girl growing up in impoverished Guerrero, Mexico, and Adelina, a woman living and working in a shelter for abused women in Los Angeles. While Juana's father has seemingly abandoned the family after crossing the border into the US, leaving his wife and daughter to cope with the hardships back home, Adelina returns to Mexico to find out the fate of her own father.
This book was chosen as a selection for a program called One Book One Region (http://www.onebookoneregion.org/) that my town has decided to take part in, so the book club at my high school read this as one of our summer selections. Ultimately we all came to very similar conclusions: this is a quick read, and show more manages to hold the reader's attention with a suspenseful plot and an interesting twist, which makes the story worthwhile. However, the writing style is very simplistic, with short, occasionally awkward sentences that yield little more than a very literal translation. The author also jumps very abruptly from narrator to narrator, possibly to create suspense, but the effect is more often jarring, rather than creating effective cliffhangers.
Overall it was a decent book, certainly not a waste of time, and certainly very topical with the current debate on illegal immigration in this country. Unfortunately little to none of the book focused on Adelina's experience in the US as the daughter of an illegal immigrant and how this shaped her identity and decision to work in the shelter, which could have only added to the book's interest.
I assume this novel is geared towards young adults, since it was chosen for high school students for the One Book One Region program, but, although the subject matter is mature, the writing style is not. Readers expecting lyrical prose may find this selection lacking. show less