When his undocumented immigrant mother disappears, eleven-year-old Deming Guo is adopted by a family that attempts to make him over as an American teen while he struggles to reconcile his new life with memories of the family he left behind.

A minor traffic accident becomes a catalyst for an unexpected bond among a human rights scholar in Brooklyn, his Chilean tenant, and an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala, who explore the difficulties of immigrants and refugees.

Sixteen-year-old Sophie has been frail and delicate since her premature birth, but discovers her true strength during a journey through Mexico, where the six-year-old orphan her family hopes to adopt was born, and to Guatemala, where her would-be boyfriend hopes to find his mother and plans to remain.

Nine-year-old Betita and her parents fled Mexico after her uncle was killed by the cartels, and settled in Los Angeles seeking political asylum and safety in what her father calls Aztlan, the land of the cranes; but now they have been swept up by by the government's Immigration Customs Enforcement, her father deported back to Mexico, and Betita and her mother confined in a family detention camp--Betita finds heart in her imagination and the picture...