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by Rosayra Pablo Cruz (Author), Julie Schwietert Collazo (Author)
"Offers hope in the face of desperate odds" - ELLE
Magazine, ELLE's Most Anticipated Books of Summer 2020
"[D]isturbing and unforgettable
memoir...This wrenching story brings to vivid life the plight of the many
families separated at the U.S.-Mexico border." - Publisher's Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
"[The]
haunting and eloquent...narrative of a Guatemalan woman's desperate search for a
better life." -Kirkus, STARRED Review
PEOPLE Magazine
Best Books of Summer 2020
TIME Magazine
Best Books of Summer 2020
PARADE Best
Books of Summer 2020
Compelling
and urgently important, The Book of Rosy is the unforgettable story of
one brave mother and her fight to save her family.
When
Rosayra "Rosy" Pablo Cruz made the agonizing decision to seek asylum in the
United States with two of her children, she knew the journey would be arduous,
dangerous, and quite possibly deadly. But she had no choice: violence--from
gangs, from crime, from spiraling chaos--was making daily life hell. Rosy knew
her family's one chance at survival was to flee Guatemala and go north.
After a
brutal journey that left them dehydrated, exhausted, and nearly starved, Rosy
and her two little boys arrived at the Arizona border. Almost immediately they
were seized and forcibly separated by government officials under the Department
of Homeland Security's new "zero tolerance" policy. To her horror Rosy
discovered that her flight to safety had only just begun.
In The
Book of Rosy, with an unprecedented level of sharp detail and soulful intimacy,
Rosy tells her story, aided by Julie Schwietert Collazo, founder of Immigrant
Families Together, the grassroots organization that reunites mothers and
children. She reveals the cruelty of the detention facilities, the excruciating
pain of feeling her children ripped from her arms, the abiding faith that
staved off despair--and the enduring friendship with Julie, which helped her
navigate the darkness and the bottomless Orwellian bureaucracy.
A gripping account of the human
cost of inhumane policies, The Book of Rosy is also a paean to
the unbreakable will of people united by true love, a sense of justice, and
hope for a better future.
