Santiago's Road Home

The "coyote" María Dolores hires to get them across the border is a decent, careful person -- which gets him murdered by the local smuggling cartel, leaving the kids on their own in the desert. Along the way, the kids find a water bottle in the desert when they're dying of thirst -- empty due to the bullet holes somebody put there to keep people like them from getting water. From early childhood Santiago has been so badly beaten, burned, and otherwise harmed by his abusive grandmother and other relatives that he's got scars all over his body. María Dolores is also scarred by the beatings of the fiance she decided to flee for her own safety and her child's. Even when people are trying to be kind, which they aren't always, the detention centers are brutal places ripping families apart and leaving kids and teens feeling (and often actually being) abandoned; a boy dies in custody.

María Dolores is fleeing an abusive ex-fiance. A stranger who claims to be a U.S. citizen offers to marry her, for a fee.

A character says of an indecisive man, "Poor man wouldn't know where to take a dump if he came across two toilets side by side." Occasional "butt," "pee," references to farts, urine-soaked floors and bedding, scene of taking a little kid to the bathroom in the detention center.

Adult characters smoke and offer cigarettes to Santiago, who refuses. In the past, Santiago lived fairly happily with an uncle who was a happy drunk, until the uncle accidentally set fire to the house.