ACROSS A HUNDRED MOUNTAINS

A Mexican teenager leaves her destitute family and tiny village to cross the U.S. border in search of her father, who left two years earlier to find work and a new start. Sounding like a cross between a folktale and news ripped from today's headlines, bilingual narrators Cynthia Farrell and Marisa Blake find a good balance between the journalistic prose and the emotional subject matter involving loss of family and culture. The details, especially those of the girl being caught between her "coyote" handlers and U.S. Customs officials, are realistic, visceral, and heartrending. In the end, Farrell's and Blake's voices emphasize the glimmers of hope that make stories of immigration universal. B.P. 2023 Audies Finalist © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine [Published: MARCH 2023]