These 'Far Away Brothers' Remake Themselves In America
Lauren Markham's careful, empathetic new book follows twin brothers from El Salvador, who flee gang violence to make a new life for themselves in a country that's increasingly harsh to immigrants.
Lily Meyer works at Politics & Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C.
I'm a book reviewer. Most of the time, it's not my job to write about politics. But it would be impossible to write about Lauren Markham's The Far Away Brothers without writing about our political moment — or, if not impossible, both cowardly and pointless, since the project of The Far Away Brothers is a political one.
Markham began writing it while a school administrator in Oakland, where she worked with dozens of students who had arrived in the's son, all of them hoping for a better life, which "for many, means a life where they are not afraid of being killed." Markham wrote to pass those stories on.
