First published 2025
Carmen drives through desert towns collecting fragments of lives disrupted by migration. She interviews families separated by deportation, documents abandoned belongings in detention centers, and records the testimonies of children who crossed alone. Each story she gathers becomes part of a larger narrative she struggles to shape into her next novel. The border reveals itself as more than a political line. It cuts through families, memories, and identities. Carmen questions whether fiction can contain such raw human experience. Her notebook fills with voices that resist easy categorization. The people she meets challenge her assumptions about home, belonging, and survival. As her project evolves, Carmen realizes she cannot remain a detached observer. The stories claim her, demanding she confront her own relationship to displacement and privilege.
Genres: fiction, literary-fiction, american-fiction, contemporary, 21st-century, activism
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Borderlands, Desert Towns, Detention Centers
Period: Contemporary
96 pages · Paperback · Dia Art Foundation