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.