Why a Booktrail?
2000s: The attempt of one family to move from Mexico to the USA
The Iguana Tree
What you need to know before your trail
Set amid the perils of illegal border crossings, The Iguana Tree is the suspenseful saga of Lilia and Hector, who separately make their way from Mexico into the United States, seeking work in the Carolinas and a home for their infant daughter.
Michel Stone s harrowing novel meticulously examines the obstacles each faces in pursuing a new life: manipulation, rape, and murder in the perilous commerce of border crossings; betrayal by family and friends; exploitation by corrupt officials and rapacious landowners on the U.S. side; and, finally, the inexorable workings of the U.S. justice system.
Travel Guide
Puerto Isadore, Oaxaca City
A fictional village close to Oaxaca City where Hector lives with his wife and new baby daughter. He leaves to build a better life and get a job in South Carolina. He pays a coyote, a people smuggler, to get his wife and child to safety after him.
Hectors journey across the border is fraught with danger.
“The rare few who are rarely caught will likely die of thirst in the desert.”
The landscape is horrendous:
The heat bears down unlike any you have experience, the desert has no ocean breeze like you have in your village. The sun scorches your shin and our tongue, and breathing is an agony. Lips crack, bleed. Dried blood cakes in your nostrils and you ask God why your tongue has grown scales.”
“ a fool’s graveyard.”
Edisto Island, South Carolina.
The promised land of the novel. Edisto Island is one of South Carolina’s Sea Islands.
Booktrail Boarding Pass: The Iguana Tree
Destination : Oaxaca, Eddis Island Author/Guide: Michel Stone Departure Time: 2000s
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