First published in 2006, Enrique's Journey is the best-selling non-fiction book by Sonia Nazario

Sonia Nazario

Sonia Nazario has written about social issues for more than two decades, most recently as a projects reporter for the Los Angeles Times. She holds the distinctions of winning the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing, and of being the youngest writer to be hired by the Wall Street Journal.She...

, about a 17-year-old boy from Honduras

Honduras

Honduras is a republic in Central America. It was previously known as Spanish Honduras to differentiate it from British Honduras, which became the modern-day state of Belize...

 who makes the difficult journey from his home town, Tegucigalpa

Tegucigalpa

Tegucigalpa , and commonly referred as Tegus , is the capital of Honduras and seat of government of the Republic, along with its twin sister Comayagüela. Founded on September 29, 1578 by the Spanish, it became the country's capital on October 30, 1880 under President Marco Aurelio Soto...

 to United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, to be reunited with his mother. It is based on a Pulitzer prize-winning series of articles in the Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

published in 2003.

The book is due to be filmed by HBO as a mini-series.

Summary

Enrique's mother, Lourdes, travels to America in search of a better life, so she can support her two young children, Enrique and his sister Belky. At the age of seventeen, Enrique decides to follow in his mother's footsteps and go to the U.S. Along the way, he must face the dangerous, and sometimes fatal, ride on the tops of the train and beatings from various gangs and police officers.

Critical reception

The reception of the book has been good. It has been assigned at nearly 50 colleges and universities as the freshman or all-campus read, and has been widely used in high school all-campus reads.