Benjamin Alire Saenz

"Ben Saenz's vivid imagination captures all that is beautiful, agonizing and redemptive in the crossings we make through borders of geography and culture. But it is in the interior journeys of the psyche and the soul that we must find salvation; Saenz's brilliant prose penetrates to that core and he finds and exposes that truth. A reader can ask for no more than this: to be spellbound by a story, and to come to the last page with a sense of having...

As a Chicano boy living in the unglamorous town of Hollywood, New Mexico, and a member of the graduating class of 1969, Sammy Santos faces the challenges of gringo racism, unpopular dress codes, the Vietnam War, barrio violence, and poverty.

-- Benjamin Alire Sáenz Los Angeles Times Book Prize and PEN Center's prestigious award for young adult fiction. Sáenz is the chair of the creative writing department of University of Texas at El Paso.

A story set on the American border with Mexico, about family and friendship, life and death, and one teen struggling to understand what his adoption does and doesn't mean about who he is--