Solito

A first-hand account of making the arduous journey without family from El Salvador to the United States at the age of nine, Solito: A Memoir (Hogarth) was a buzzy book when it came out in the fall of 2022. I picked up a copy at Javier Zamora’s reading at Changing Hands in Phoenix (he signed it to me with “abrazos centroamericanos”). But for some odd and surely inexcusable reason I didn’t get around to reading it until the spring.  It lives up to the hype. Zamora, who previously published a book of poetry, is a marvelous writer with a heartbreaking yet hopeful story to tell.