Book Discussion: Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli

A family's summer road trip across America probes the nature of justice and equality in America today. A family of four travels from New York to Arizona to the Apacheria, the mystical region the Apaches once called home. The father, a sound documentarist, hopes to gather an "inventory of echoes" from this historic place. The mother, a radio journalist, becomes consumed by the news on the car radio about thousands of children trying to reach America but getting stranded at the southern border, held in detention centers, or being sent back to their homelands to an unknown fate. As the family travels westward, they stand on the brink of their own crisis, as they live through an unforgettable adventure in the harsh desert landscape and within their own imaginations. Told through the voices of the mother and son, as well as a collection of texts, images, and stories of migration and displacement, this is a novel about how we document our experiences and how we remember the things that matter to us most.