Solito
SynopsisPlot
Javier Zamora’s adventure is a three-thousand-mile journey from his small town in El Salvador, through Guatemala and Mexico, and across the U.S. border. He will leave behind his beloved aunt and grandparents to reunite with a mother who left four years ago and a father he barely remembers. Traveling alone amid a group of strangers and a “coyote” hired to lead them to safety, Javier expects his trip to last two short weeks.
Story
About this book
Solito is Javier Zamora's account of his own migration from El Salvador to the United States, made when he was nine years old. The route ran about three thousand miles, north through Guatemala and Mexico to the border crossing. He left his aunt and grandparents behind, heading toward a mother who had gone ahead four years earlier and a father he barely remembered.
Zamora traveled without family, joining a group of strangers led by a hired coyote, the word used for a paid guide who moves people across borders. He expected the trip to take two weeks. The book follows the crossing as a child experienced it, among adults he did not know, in landscapes and towns he had never seen.
The title is Spanish for alone, and it carries two meanings: a boy separated from everyone he knew, and the situation of many others who leave without much choice. Zamora keeps the account close to specifics, a small Salvadoran town, the shape of the route, and the strangers who became his temporary company along it.
