Pescadero

FINALIST, THE MONTAIGNE MEDAL - Eric Hoffer Book Awards - FINALIST - Next Generation Indie Book Awards - AMONG THE BEST INDIE LITERARY FICTION OF THE YEAR - Kirkus Reviews, starred review

What compels someone to cross a brutal and unforgiving desert in search of a better life?

In this deeply moving novel, a Midwest girl bears witness to-and then becomes entangled in-the struggles of two undocumented brothers caught on opposite sides of the US/Mexico border.

Fourteen-year-old Hilde, raised on a family farm in Wisconsin, is dragged to the northern California coastal town of Pescadero by a mother fleeing a bad marriage. But Pescadero is worlds away from the conservative Midwest, and Hilde finds herself adrift in a community where all the attitudes she absorbed growing up seem oddly off-key.

When her mother hires an undocumented worker to tend the goat farm the family is trying to revive, Hilde strikes up an unlikely friendship with him and learns of his plan to bring his brother across the Border. But the brother's journey turns calamitous, and Hilde soon becomes engulfed in its harrowing aftermath.

Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Palo Alto Publishing
Published: 06/04/2026
ISBN: 9798987727744
Pages: 274
Weight: 1.18lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.63d