Into the Beautiful North ​
Readalike Titles for Adults
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Into the Beautiful North​
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The Butterfly’s Daughter, by Mary Alice Monroe​
-​
Every
year, the monarch butterflies—​
las mariposas​
—fly more
than two thousand miles on fragile wings to return to
their winter home in Mexico. Now Luz Avila makes that
same perilous journey south as she honors a vow to her
beloved​
abuela​
​
—the grandmother who raised her—to
return her ashes to her ancestral village. As Luz departs
Milwaukee in a ramshackle old VW Bug, she finds her
heart opened by a series of seemingly random encounters
with remarkable women. In San Antonio, however, a
startling revelation awaits: a reunion with a woman from her past. Together, the
two cross into Mexico to await the returning monarchs in the little village
Abuela called home, but they are also crossing a border that separates past from
present . . . and truth from lies.
Across a Hundred Mountains by Reyna Grande ​
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.​
Book descriptions provided by Amazon
Enrique’s Journey​
by Sonia Nazario​
– This book
recounts the unforgettable quest of a Honduran
boy looking for his mother, eleven years after she
is forced to leave her starving family to find work in
the United States. Braving unimaginable peril,
often clinging to the sides and tops of freight
trains, Enrique travels through hostile worlds full of
thugs, bandits, and corrupt cops. But he pushes
forward, relying on his wit, courage, hope, and the
kindness of strangers.​
Nonfiction
The World In Half by Cristina Henriqez​
-​
Miraflores never
knew her father, and never thought he wanted to know
her. But when she returns to the Chicago suburb where
she grew up to care for her ailing mother, she discovers
that her mother and father were greatly in love, and that
her father had wanted a daughter more than she could
have imagined. Now, Miraflores secretly plots a trip to
Panama, in search of the man she hopes can heal her
mother-and who can help her find the pieces of her own
identity. What she finds is unexpected, exhilarating, and
holds the power
to change the course of her life.
Amigoland by Oscar Casares​
-​
In a small town on the
Mexican border live two brothers, Don Fidencio and
Don Celestino. Stubborn and independent, they now
must face the facts: they are old, and they have let a
family argument stand between them for too long. Don
Celestino's good-natured housekeeper encourages him
to make amends--while he still can. They secretly
liberate Don Fidencio from his nursing home and travel
into ​
Mexico ​
to solve the mystery at the heart of their
dispute: the family legend of their grandfather's
kidnapping. As the unlikely trio travels, the brothers
learn it's never too late for a new beginning.
Book descriptions provided by Amazon
The Madonnas of Echo Park by Brando Skyhorse
is both a grand mural of a Los Angeles
neighborhood and an intimate glimpse into the
lives of the men and women who struggle to lose
their ethnic identity in the pursuit of the American
dream. Each chapter summons a different
voice—poetic, fierce, comic. We meet Hector, a
day laborer who trolls the streets for work and
witnesses a murder that pits his morality against
his illegal status; his ex-wife Felicia, who narrowly
survives a shooting and lands a cleaning job in a
Hollywood Hills house as desolate as its owner;
and young Aurora, who journeys through her now
gentrified childhood neighborhood to discover her
own history and her place in the land that all Mexican-Americans dream of, “the
land that belongs to us again.”​
Woman Hollering Creek ​
-​
A collection of stories,
whose characters give voice to the vibrant and
varied life on both sides of the Mexican border.
The women in these stories offer tales of pure
discovery, filled with moments of infinite and
intimate wisdom.
Just Like Us by Helen
Thorpe​
tells the story
​
of four high school
students whose parents
entered this country
illegally from Mexico.
We meet the girls on
the eve of their senior
prom in Denver, Colorado. All four of the girls have
grown up in the United States, and all four want to live
the American dream, but only two have documents. As
the girls attempt to make it into college, they discover
that only the legal pair sees a clear path forward. Their
friendships start to divide along lines of immigration
status.
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