This timely, moving debut novel follows a teen's efforts to keep his family together as his parents face deportation.Mateo Garcia and his younger sister, Sophie, have been taught to fear one word for as long as they can remember: deportation. Over the past few years, however, the fear that their undocumented immigrant parents could be sent back to Mexico started to fade. Ma and Pa have been in the United States for so long, they have American-born children, and they're hard workers and good neighbors. When Mateo returns from school one day to find that his parents have been taken by ICE, he realizes that his family's worst nightmare has become a reality. With his parents' fate and his own future hanging in the balance, Mateo must figure out who he is and what he is capable of, even as he's forced to question what it means to be an American.Daniel Aleman's Indivisible is a remarkable story-both powerful in its explorations of immigration in America and deeply intimate in its portrait of a teen boy driven by his fierce, protective love for his parents and his sister.

There is a word Mateo Garcia and his younger sister Sophie have been taught to fear for as long as they can remember: deportation. Over the past few years, however, the fear that their undocumented immigrant parents could be sent back to Mexico has started to fade to the back of their minds. And why wouldn't it, when their Ma and Pa have been in the United States for so long, they have American-born children, and they're hard workers and good neighbors? When two ICE agents come asking for Pa, the Garcia family realizes that the lives they've built are about to come crumbling down. And when Mateo returns from school one day to find that his parents have been taken, he must come to terms with the fact that his family's worst nightmare has become a reality. With his parents' fate and his own future hanging in the balance, Mateo must figure out who he is and what he is capable of, even as he's forced to question what it means to be an American teenager in a country that rejects his own mom and dad. Daniel Aleman's Indivisible is a remarkable and timely story -- both powerful in its explorations of immigration in America and deeply intimate in its portrait of a teen boy driven by his fierce, protective love for his parents and his sister.

In this thoughtful and timely second novel, Daniel Aleman addresses immigration and physical and emotional borders through the story of a girl who crosses into the US for school and work, but finds it difficult to return to the ones she loves in Mexico. Every morning, sixteen-year-old Sol wakes up at the break of dawn in her hometown of Tijuana and makes the trip across the border to go to school in California. Though the commute is exhausting, and her odd schedule makes having a social life nearly impossible, it's the only way to achieve her dream-a life where she is successful, able to help support her family, and where maybe she won't feel so lonely. But with the family restaurant struggling after the death of her mother, Sol must add yet another thing to her plate-a part-time job in San Diego. Sol's complicated work schedule means moving in with her best friend and leaving her family behind-at least until the weekends But the job leaves her almost too drained for school, her little brother is struggling without her, and the bills are piling up. With so much responsibility on her shoulders, her once simple dreams seem impossible. With her life divided by an international border and her family relying on her, Sol must come to terms with the loneliness she hides, the pressure she feels as the only American-born citizen in her family, and who and where she wants to be. This timely and thoughtful story about a teen girl shouldering impossibly large responsibilities and ultimately learning that she doesn't have to do it alone is the perfect follow-up to Daniel Aleman's award-winning debut novel, Indivisible.