The New York Times Book Review
- Amanda Eyre Ward
Vaillant's triumph is the way he invites readers to know Héctor so intimately as he waits for salvation or death…This is what novels can do—illuminate shadowed lives, enable us to contemplate our own depths of kindness, challenge our beliefs about fate…Vaillant's use of fact to inspire fiction brings to mind a long list of powerful novels from the past decade or so: What Is the What, by Dave Eggers; The Map of Love, by Ahdaf Soueif; The Storyteller, by Jodi Picoult; Salvage the Bones, by Jesmyn Ward; American Woman, by Susan Choi; Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; and more. In a world of relentless content and thin (if bright) attractions, what could be more important than carving out an hour or three and opening yourself to the voice of another, to the possibility that a novel will transform you?
Publishers Weekly09/08/2014
Following his nonfiction works The Golden Spruce and The Tiger, Vaillant delivers a dramatic, tense novel that begins in the claustrophobic confines of a water truck, in which 15 would-be immigrants to the U.
