Big Blue (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798218612627)

A page-turning struggle for survival that strikes at the heart of one of our time's most significant political and social issues.

Informed by actual events, Big Blue is set in a time of heightened anti-immigrant sentiment, deportations, and threats to close the U.S.-Mexico border. Unable to secure a rare medical device for his daughter's heart condition because of the chaos, Bill Blythe, a California melon farmer, and his teenage daughter, Jocelyn, journey south to Tijuana, Mexico, where her medical device is made. While there, they seek the help of a Mexican family whose matriarch works for the maquila that manufactures Jocelyn's device and whose sister - an undocumented migrant farmworker named María - is trapped in a game of cat-and-mouse with Bill's chief rival, Ed Simmons, who wants to make her a scapegoat to avoid a federal raid on his farm, and Bill's wife, Betty Jo, who blames her for her family's unresolved past.

Will María evade Betty Jo's vengeance and escape Ed's attempt to turn her over to the Feds? Will regional conflict, cartel violence, and a rush of migrants at the border prevent Bill and Jocelyn from securing Jocelyn's life-saving medical device and crossing back over the border before it's too late? Will wrongs be righted, relationships mended, and the past overcome? Or will seasons change, but people not so much?

A parable of modern-day migration, Big Blue takes the North American reader on a cross-cultural journey that reveals a father's boundless love for his only child and exposes a cycle of bias, bigotry, betrayal, and greed that influences people and politics today on both sides of the border.