Enrique's Journey

By: Sonia Nazario

Narrated by: Catherine Byers

In this astonishing true story, award-winning journalist Sonia Nazario recounts the unforgettable odyssey of a Honduran boy who braves unimaginable hardship and peril to reach his mother in the United States.

When Enrique is five years old, his mother, Lourdes, too poor to feed her children, leaves Honduras to work in the United States. The move allows her to send money back home to Enrique so he can eat better and go to school past the third grade.

Lourdes promises Enrique she will return quickly. But she struggles in America. Years pass. He begs for his mother to come back. Without her, he becomes lonely and troubled.

With gritty determination and a deep longing to be by his mother's side, Enrique travels through hostile, unknown worlds. Each step of the way through Mexico, he and other migrants, many of them children, are hunted like animals. Gangsters control the tops of the trains. Bandits rob and kill migrants up and down the tracks. Corrupt cops all along the route are out to fleece and deport them. To evade Mexican police and immigration authorities, they must jump onto and off the moving boxcars they call El Tren de la Muerte - the Train of Death.

Enrique pushes forward using his wit, courage, and hope - and the kindness of strangers. It is an epic journey, one thousands of immigrant children make each year to find their mothers in the United States.

Based on the Los Angeles Times newspaper series that won two Pulitzer Prizes, one for feature writing and another for feature photography, Enrique's Journey is the timeless story of families torn apart, the yearning to be together again, and a boy who will risk his life to find the mother he loves.

©2006 Sonia Nazario (P)2008 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"The breadth and depth of Nazario's research into this phenomenon is astounding, and she has crafted her findings into a story that is at once moving and polemical." ( Publishers Weekly)

Important and intriguing read.

Loved it. Listened in the car daily and was impressed with each new chapter. A must read for educators.

Enlightening

The narrator DESTROYED the Spanish. I’m certain there must have been someone else who could have read this, but it was an interesting listen nonetheless.

Excellent reporting; reader butchers Spanish

Nazario's reporting is excellent. She's taken a heart wrenching situation and woven in humanity to make it bearable.

Byers is a good reader for English but her Spanish takes away from her performance.

Eh

Amazing book but the narrators voices sucks for this type of story. She completely butchers the Spanish parts

Great story, horrible reading

This story is really interesting and moving; however, the awfulness of the narrator’s performance distracts from the story. Monotone voice and butchers the Spanish. Should have been a Spanish-speaker

Eye-opening!

This story truly depicts the experience of leaving a cold behind in order to provide them with a better life. The emotional impact that that this story illustrates will alter your currently held notions about the immigrant experience.

The ending is messed up

Overall, this was a powerful story of one young illegal immigrant’s struggle to make it to and in America. The book is quite sympathetic to him, his family, and other migrants like them; however, the author never backs away from shining a light on the problems and dangers that come with illegal immigration. I recommend the book, but hesitantly. The reader is rather dry and slow. I’ve listened to hundreds of books, and this is the first time that I listened with a the narration sped up at all, and I did it at 1.5. The other issue is the ending. The epilogue got skipped with the afterword being read instead, and then it was back to the afterword again. And all of it seemed disjointed and difficult to follow.

Riveting

I (figuratively) couldn't put this book down. A fair, compelling and extremely moving picture of how complicated social issues related to migration, societal breakdown, and family relationships are reflected in the story of one family.

Could have been written better

Is there anything you would change about this book?

Could been more interesting by giving the characters a voice. The topic was interesting and one that needs to be told. Pretty much written as all facts which made it boring.

What aspect of Catherine Byers’s performance would you have changed?

Very flat. Little inflection

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

No

Informing!

Amazing and informing story about the dangers along the immigration path! I loved the chronological addendums and updates at the end to give a sense of the most recent experiences of the protagonists/subjects.

The narrator was a unfortunately very robotic sounding, to the point that I had to double check to see if it was an computerized voice.