After a tragedy separates her from her mother, Juana García leaves in search of her father, who left them two years earlier. Out of money and in need of someone to help her across the border, Juana meets Adelina Vasquez, a young woman who left her family in California to follow her lover to Mexico. Finding themselves—in a Tijuana jail—in desperate circumstances, they offer each other much needed material and spiritual support and ultimately become linked forever in the most unexpected of ways. In , Reyna Grande puts a human face on the controversial issue of immigration, helping readers to better understand “the desperation of illegal immigrants and the families they leave behind” ( ) in pursuit of a better life.