At the age of nine, Javier Zamora left his extended family in El Salvador to be reunited with his parents who had already migrated to America. The resulting journey—by boat and truck and on foot, through immense stretches of desert and across several borders— proved grueling and formative. Yet Zamora's account is poetic and hopeful, delighting in the details of the places he visits—the green mangoes, the sugarcane fields, the joy of eating tacos for the first time in Mexico. Zamora convincingly renders the world from a child's perspective; the warmth he displays as a boy amid dangerous circumstances makes him irresistibly sympathetic. More than a memoir, this is a genuine literary achievement.