THE FAR AWAY BROTHERS

Two years ago, in a small town in central El Salvador, seventeen-year-old Raul Santos got a call from his mother. “Don’t come home,” she said. Local gang members had been at the house looking for him, guns drawn. The next day, his father made arrangements to sell part of his farm in order to pay the $8,000 fee to smuggle Raul to the United States. A few days later, Raul’s identical twin brother, Ernesto, grew worried that he’d be mistaken for Raul and be killed. So he, too, went north. At the Texas border, they were caught.

We Can’t Go Back is the story of the Santos twins’ childhood in rural El Salvador, the gang violence that informed their decision to flee north, and an in-depth account of their lives in the U.S. After being arrested at the border, they were sent to California to live with an estranged brother and await their day in immigration court. Markham met the twins at Oakland International High School, where they were able to enroll even amid their legal limbo. While one twin now wishes that he could return home, the other feels that the U.S. is unquestionably the place to be. With nearly 65,000 unaccompanied minors apprehended in 2014, one thing is very clear: children like Ernesto and Raul are the new face of illegal immigration.

With a keen eye for detail, Markham offers an intimate look into the lives of the twins in the spirit of Behind the Beautiful Forevers and The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. A gifted storyteller, she engages readers in the details of the everyday lives of the twins, from teenage triumphs, first loves, the extreme bond of their brotherhood, and their path to making a new home in America.

Until now, no one has told the full story of child migrants: why they leave, how they come, and what happens once they’re caught. By delving into the experiences of the twins in both El Salvador and the U.S., the book will provide a deeply human portrait of the transnational crisis of child migration. As a journalist and an educator, Markham is uniquely qualified to tell this story at the exact moment when this influx of unaccompanied minors is being recognized as a human rights crisis by the Obama administration and policymakers nationwide. Unlike many immigration narratives, the writer will also be a character in the book—someone with deep ties to the twins and with a strong stake in their survival.

Lauren Markham’s work has appeared in outlets such as VQR, NewYorker.com, The New Republic, Guernica, Vice Magazine, Orion, and on This American Life. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and has been awarded a UC Berkeley 11th Hour Food & Farming Journalism Fellowship and the Middlebury Fellowship in Environmental Journalism. Her work at Oakland International High School has been profiled recently in the New York Times, and on a segment on the PBS NewsHour. She lives in Berkeley, California.