Four months after their mother’s deportation, eighteen-year-old Silvia and her younger siblings are in trouble. Mami’s careful plans for their survival in her absence have broken down: Silvia is stretched with responsibilities, all three children are struggling in school, the family is nearly out of money, and social workers and federal agents are closing in.
 
As Silvia learns of her ancestors’ own struggle with anti-Mexican sentiment at the border in the 1930s, she pieces together clues left in her bisabuela’s diary that could guarantee her mother’s US citizenship. And not a moment too soon. With ICE raiding a neighboring apartment and with Mami preparing for an illegal crossing back home, Silvia whisks her siblings away on a frantic mission to prove that they all belong in the United States.
 
Told through parallel narratives, Socorro is a story about the fears and struggles of children of an undocumented parent, two mothers’ sacrifices for their families three generations apart, the cyclical history of anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States, and the enduring legacy of hope.
 
Sara A. Leman is always writing in her head. She is Professor of Spanish and Associate Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Fordham University in New York City, where she teaches creative writing and literature. She holds a PhD from Boston University and has published five academic books on topics ranging from colonial commerce to contemporary fiction. A recent alumna of Sarah Lawrence College's Writing Institute, Sara writes fiction that offers peeks into topics as “small" as family life and as big as social justice and multiculturalism. Socorro is her first novel.