This Foreign Land

Written by Eleanor Morse
Published by Littoral Books

In 2018, the ultimate cruelty became official U.S. Immigration policy, and immigrant children began to be forcibly taken from their parents at the southern borders.
Vincent, one of four main characters in this literary novel, is a man whose brain works quite differently from most brains. He is a peace-loving man working in a hardware store and living in Maine with his sister, Bryn, a third-grade teacher. One Saturday morning, listening to the radio in their shared kitchen, Vincent hears the voice of the U.S. Attorney General encapsulating the new policy: “If you don’t want to lose your children, don’t bring them to the border.”

Vincent tells Bryn that they can’t just go on with their lives; he is going to walk to Texas. Bryn tells him that he is not, but a few days later, she returns from work and finds that her brother is gone, along with his sturdy boots and their camping equipment.

Vincent’s journey south forms the backbone of this book, while two other story lines unfold: the lives of Dolores and her daughter Lina walking north from Ecuador, and a story that involves Bryn.

The research involved in the writing of this book was done in Brownsville, Texas and Matamoros, Mexico, with the help of the Rio Valley Relief Project, who since 2018 have supported immigrants and asylum seekers in every imaginable way.