Linda Lowery,
Truth and Salsa
Peachtree, 2006.

Ages 10-14

Twelve-year-old, Michigan-born-and-bred Hayley is having difficulty coping with her parents' separation.  When her Mom needs some time alone, Hayley has to go and spend six months with her 'weird' Gran  - who's taken herself off to live in Mexico.  Hayley is herself the narrator of the story and her sassy, up-beat style keeps the pages turning as we share the ups and downs of her experiences.  She makes friends with Lili and together they try and solve the secret of the ghost which is said to haunt her grandmother's house; they also end up as extras in a TV film - not wholly the glamorous experience or outcome they had expected!  Hayley's enthusiasm for trying out everything also gets her into trouble when, despite her Gran's warnings, she tastes every dish at a fiesta and ends up with a nasty dose of food poisoning. 

The fiesta is actually a going-away party for all the dads, including Lili's, who are about to go to the United States to work.  Hayley is already aware that migrant workers come from Mexico to work on farms near her home in Michigan: she has seen them.  Sharing this emotional time with them of partying and saying good-bye jolts Hayley's perception of what her own attitude had been to them in their role of migrant worker: they were simply men who came to work on the farms and then went home again.  The thought that they had to go through the heart-ache of separation from their families, that they hated being so far from home, that they did nothing but work so that they could send as much money home as possible had never crossed her mind before.  Her previous mindset is further challenged when she visits a rural school, ostensibly to tell the children about America.  For them, America is as much another world as Mexico was to her before she came there: but, as is pointed out, both countries share the same sunrise.  When she discovers that Lili's father and others are being cheated by their boss in Michigan, the girls start a far-reaching campaign to bring the dads home. 

Throughout, there is the contrast with Hayley's own situation.  Her Dad has left home for very different reasons and will not be returning.  Hayley arrives in Mexico with all her anger and pain in tow but as the weeks pass, she starts to let them go. Much to her delight, her Gran has enrolled her in the local School of Arts. Her art teacher, however,is unimpressed with her skills at drawing what is in front of her: she must paint herself, her heart, her curazón onto the canvas.  It is thus through painting, painting, painting that she is able to accept the fact that her parents will not get back together. 

Readers will enjoy sharing Hayley's adventures; many will empathise with her and learn much about Mexico in the process - its culture and concerns.  The book's first-person diary-like format means that we learn these things in the same way Hayley did - she is our eyes and ears, so the reader is confronted with serious issues in a both meaningful and non-didactic way; and because she is also seeking a solution to her own personal worries and shares her opinions, the book retains the intimacy which makes this such a good read for its age-group.

Marjorie Coughlan
September 2006