Today's Blip feature is Bettina Restrepo's YA novel Illegal, from Katherine Tegen Books (an imprint of Harper Collins). Here is Bettina's summary and what inspired her to write the book.
Summary (flap copy): Nora is on a desperate journey far from home. When her father leaves their beloved Mexico in search of work, Nora fights to make sense of her loss while waiting for her father’s return and a better day. When the letters and the money from her father stop coming, Nora decides she and her mother must look for him in Texas.
We are all immigrants.
Bettina Restrepo’s powerful and deeply hopeful debut novel captures the challenges of one girl’s unique yet universal immigrant experience.
What inspired you to write the story?
This story evolved from my professional life as an Internal Auditor with the grocery store Fiesta Mart <http://www.fiestamart.com/> in Houston, Texas.
Many of the ethnic customers spent their entire financial lives in the store. They cashed a check, sent money home via Western Union, paid their bills in installments, and bought a bus pass. With whatever was left over, they bought food. One week later, the process repeated.
One neighborhood, Quitman, grew in my heart. I watched the people, and one day, by the side of the road, I saw a young girl. I wondered what her story was and she grew into Nora, my main character.
Somewhere in the middle of my first draft, a terrible incident occurred in South Texas and was widely reported in the news. <http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,223700,00.html> A truck driver smuggling over seventy illegal immigrants thought he was about to be arrested by the police. He dropped his metal trailer in the middle of a field in the middle of July where the average temperature was 101 degrees F.
Nineteen of the people inside the trailer, including a child, cooked to death before the doors were opened. I'll never forget the pictures I saw in the newspaper. It spurred me to finish the book and tell an individual's story...rather than just a story of a border crossing.
Name of book: Illegal
Publishing House: Katherine Tegen Books, an Imprint of Harper Collins
Category: Young adult, ages 12 and up
Release: March 11, 2011
Short bio: Bettina Restrepo pushed her way out into the world at Ft. Sill, Lawton, Oklahoma. Two weeks later, she received a passport and began traveling the world.
Her German mother, her Colombian father and her big brother migrated from place to place with the U.S. Army. She received her BS in Communications from the University of Texas at Austin – where she marched in the band, made a “D” in math, and slept through economics. But she still graduated in three years with an unquenchable lust for learning and reading. Bettina spent many years being a frustrated Internal Auditor while writing at night, far away from the eyes of the corporate world. She now writes full time near Dallas, Texas where she lives with her husband, son and dog.
Author links: www.bettinarestrepo.com <http://www.bettinarestrepo.com>
Facebook: www.facebook.com/bettinarestrepo <http://www.facebook.com/bettinarestrepo>
Twitter: bettinarestrepo
Goodreads: bettinarestrepo
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