Alma Cruz wishes her willful teenage daughter, Luz, could know the truth about her past, but there are things Luz can never know about the journey Alma took to the US to find her missing father. In 2000—three years after the disappearance of her father, who left Oaxaca to work on farms in California—Alma sets out on a perilous trek north with her sister, Rosa. What happens once she reaches the US … US is a journey from despair to hope. Timeless in its depiction of the depths of family devotion and the blaze of first love, Luz conveys, with compassion and insight, the plight of those desperate to cross the US border.
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I’ve lived in California all my life and illegal immigrants from Mexico have been a part of it, from students of mine, to friends of my kids, to workers in stores. I’ve never had the opportunity to ask any of them about crossing the border. In Luz, Debra Thomas portrays the rich world of a Mexican family with all its love and drama. Teenaged sisters Alma and Rosa set off to cross the border to find their father. Although they receive generous loving help, they also experience fear and are attacked. For Alma to rise above that and make a life for herself shows an inner strength and resilience that I respect. Thomas’s story is one of personal need, not politics, and her characters are compelling.
Endearing, heartbreaking, and poignantly written. Like any great book, I became vested in the characters and their journeys. The author has taken great care to research and understand the plight faced by immigrants and she translates that brilliantly through her storytelling. I enjoyed taking this adventure with Alma and saw a different life perspective through her eyes. There were surprises and unforeseen plot points—some are happy, others are devastating—and the layers add to the complexity and depth of the narrative. The author’s love, appreciation, and respect for her characters are prevalent throughout the pages, and I appreciated her descriptive insights at the end of the book. Brilliantly done!
This beautifully written novel is bursting at the seams with all the mystery and suspense of any uncertain journey. Hoping to find their father, teen-aged Alma (the novel’s narrator) and her older sister Rosa make the difficult decision to travel from Mexico to the United States. Along the way, Alma falls in love with Manuel, a Guatemalan, who travels with them. As they try again and again to reach el norte, the trio encounters danger and heartbreak. Throughout the novel, Alma’s courage and intelligence are apparent on every page.
“Luz” by Debra Thomas is a compelling and Beautifully written story of the Journey two sisters on on in search of their undocumented father whom they have not heard from for 3 years after he left to go work across the border. This story made me feel every bump, hurt and happiness these sisters endured. I loved this book, it was a hard to put down book. I Highly recommend this book. L.Haney
Who is Luz? And why does it matter?
Debra Thomas’ debut novel LUZ (She Writes Press) was an eye-opener for me. Despite immigration from Mexico being front and center in the news, I haven’t spent much energy learning what it really means to desperately need and want to flee your country. This exceptionally well-written story has changed all that.
In the novel, we accompany teenagers Alma and her sister Rosa on a harrowing journey through Mexico to America in a search for their father who’d disappeared three years prior. Through their mutual bond and faith in each other, we experience true sisterly love and caring, as well as deep-seated courage in the face of unknown dangers.
It’s perhaps through Alma’s mathematical mind, she’s able to persevere, to never give up her mission. And when she gets to the other side, and all does not end the way she’d hoped, Alma is rewarded in ways she never expected. Sometimes the past should remain past, because the future holds so much more promise.
Thomas educates us on the perils of crossing the border illegally without inserting a heavy political narrative. As a reader, I appreciated that she gave me just enough history that will enable me to do my own research on topics that are of particular interest to me.
So who is Luz? You’ll need to read the book to get the answer to that burning question!
This book is filled with memorable characters, none more so than the teen-age protagonist, Alma. She is a tender-hearted fighter. This is a story about risk, loss, and love. I enjoyed every minute of it.
Written in elegant and boldly human prose, Deb Thomas’ debut novel captured me from the first line of her prologue and held me until the very last sentence when I didn’t want the story to end. “Math problems” are a brilliant device to help characterize Alma’s smarts, hope, resilience, and passion as she overcomes great hardship in her native Mexico and ventures with her sister and her newly met boyfriend to cross the border into the U.S. The book will heighten awareness of the dangers and risks immigrants take to get here from the south and the work they do in hot fields, restaurants, and hotels when they arrive. This is a winner. I strongly recommend Luz.
Thomas’s book took me on a trip like none other. Once I began the trip with Alma and Rosa from Oaxaca northward, like the two protagonists , I couldn’t stop. I revisited many sites I had known as a tourist, but seeing big cities and cultivated fields from the eyes of these two young girls, touched my heart and soul. Alma, the narrator of her story, is gutsy and brave. Her sister, Rosa, is sensitive and observant. The twists in the plot kept me on edge wondering “What next?” The thread involving Dolores Huerta was an ingenious ploy that tied the entire storyline together to someone still working for social justice and made this book all the more relevant to what is happening to migrants today
Love and Empathy: I read Luz in one setting. Yesterday. I was totally taken by the protagonist–Alma–a young, brave, inexperienced girl on a universal quest from Oaxaca to Los Angeles in search of her father. The losses she experiences, though horrible, horrible, are not described in a gratuitous way. But I believed in them. This is a novel clearly written out of love and empathy, and I was in it the whole distance.