Across A Hundred Mountains

Adelina stays close to Don Ernesto until the day he dies. Before he dies, Don Ernesto encourages Adelina not to push Sebastian away, insisting, “‘Love is hard to find. You must not let it go’” (157). After he dies, Don Ernesto leaves Adelina a large inheritance. Adelina uses the money to hire a private investigator to search for her father. Soon, the investigator believes he has found Adelina’s father working in the fields in a town north of Los Angeles. The investigator warns Adelina that the man was in a car accident and doesn’t remember much but remembers that he once had a wife and a daughter. Adelina takes the bus to see him. At the man’s home, she meets his partner, a woman named Gloria. When she finally meets the man, he introduces himself as Miguel García. Adelina says that he is not her father.

On the second day of Juana’s bus ride to Tijuana, the bus is stopped by soldiers from the Department of Immigration searching for illegal immigrants from Central America. The soldiers demand to see everyone’s papers. Juana doesn’t have papers, but a man next to her tells the soldiers that Juana is his daughter.

In Tijuana, Juana intends to find coyotes, men who help people travel across the border, and ask if any of them know her father. Juana has no more money, and her first night in Tijuana, she must sleep on the streets. As Juana tries to fall asleep, a man accuses her of stealing his wallet. Two officers capture Juana and put her in jail. Juana can tell that the other three girls in her jail cell are prostitutes by their clothing. Nevertheless, she begins talking to one girl, who introduces herself as Adelina Vasquez. Adelina reveals that she is from the United States but ran away from home with her boyfriend three years ago, an older man who left her at the apartment building she now lives in. After they are released from jail, Adelina invites Juana to stay at her apartment building, but Adelina warns Juana that Juana will have to do the same kind of work Adelina does in order to make money, as well as get the coyotes to speak to her.