Enrique's journey

Enrique is five when his mother, Lourdes, leaves Honduras for the United States. She is too poor to feed her children, and the wages she sends home will let him eat better and stay in school past the third grade. She promises to come back soon, but she struggles in America and the years pass.

Without her, Enrique grows lonely and troubled. He begs her to return, and she tells him on the phone to be patient. After eleven years apart, he sets out alone from Tegucigalpa with a slip of paper bearing her North Carolina telephone number and no money.

His route runs the length of Mexico, and he travels it illegally on the sides and tops of freight trains. Migrants on the route, many of them children, are hunted. Gangsters control the tops of the trains, bandits rob and kill along the tracks, and corrupt police look to fleece and deport them.

To avoid the authorities, the migrants jump on and off moving boxcars known as El Tren de la Muerte, The Train of Death. Enrique relies on his wit, his courage and the kindness of strangers.

This is narrative non-fiction by journalist Sonia Nazario, based on a Los Angeles Times series that won two Pulitzer Prizes, one for feature writing and one for feature photography. It follows one boy's trip, which thousands of children make each year to reach their mothers.