It’s not immediately apparent that this is a memoir – it could be fiction and rate just as highly. It’s only by reading the acknowledgements that the backstory is revealed. Javier is a nine-year-old boy attempting to get from his home in El Salvador to his parents in California. He, along with a group of hopeful refugees, have (human) ‘coyotes’ to help smuggle them into the USA. Javier’s grandfather travels with him on the first leg but then he’s on his own… solito. This Spanish word is easily translatable: alone, lonely, solitary.

Javier narrates the story in the first person with the immediacy of present tense. Language is elemental to the story. The narrative is written in English with Spanish mixed in. It’s not necessary to know Spanish to follow the narrative. Indeed, it may help to not understand each word. Non-Spanish-speaking readers will be a little lost. Taken right out of their comfort zone. Just like Javier is. This generates an empathetically immersive experience for those readers. (Possibly after finishing the book the reader may know a little Spanish también.)

The group expect to travel by road through Guatemala to Mexico and then cross the border on foot. Each leg of the trip has complications and physical and emotional pitfalls. Javier’s journey takes seven weeks. All this time he is between his family at home and his parents waiting in California. Solito … but also not.

He forms close bonds with a mother and daughter and another man. They are his temporary family. Their love for each other helps them survive. That love is no less indomitable than within Javier’s blood family.

This book is an extraordinary, powerfully emotive triumph.

Reviewed by Bob Moore