About the Book This novel tells the story of a familys summer road trip across America - a journey that, with profound humanity, probes the nature of justice and equality in America today. A mother and father set out with their kids from New York to Arizona. In their used Volvo - and with their ten-year-old son trying out his new Polaroid camera - the family is heading for the Apacheria: the region the Apaches once called home, and where the ghosts of Geronimo and Cochise might still linger. The father, a sound documentarist, hopes to gather an inventory of echoes from this historic, mythic place. The mother, a radio journalist, becomes consumed by the news she hears on the car radio, about the 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. But as the family drives farther west - through Virginia to Tennessee, across Oklahoma and Texas - we sense they are on the brink of a crisis of their own. A fissure is growing between the parents, one the children can feel beneath their feet. They are led, inexorably, to a grand, unforgettable adventure - both in the harsh desert landscape and within the chambers of their own imaginations. Told through the voices of the mother and her son, as well as through a stunning tapestry of collected texts and images - including prior stories of migration and displacement - this is a story of how we document our experiences, and how we remember the things that matter to us the most.--description provided by publisher. Book Synopsis NEW YORK TIMES 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR - An epic road trip [that also] captures the unruly intimacies of marriage and parenthood ... This is a novel that daylights our common humanity, and challenges us to reconcile our differences. -- The Washington Post One of The Atlantic s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years In Valeria Luisellis fiercely imaginative follow-up to the American Book Award-winning Tell Me How It Ends , an artist couple set out with their two children on a road trip from New York to Arizona in the heat of summer. As the family travels west, the bonds between them begin to fray: a fracture is growing between the parents, one the children can almost feel beneath their feet. Through ephemera such as songs, maps and a Polaroid camera, the children try to make sense of both their familys crisis and the larger one engulfing the news: the stories of thousands of kids trying to cross the southwestern border into the United States but getting detained--or lost in the desert along the way. A breath-taking feat of literary virtuosity, Lost Children Archive is timely, compassionate, subtly hilarious, and formally inventive--a powerful, urgent story about what it is to be human in an inhuman world. Review Quotes ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: THE WASHINGTON POST - TIME MAGAZINE - NPR - CHICAGO TRIBUNE - GQ - O, THE OPRAH MAGAZINE - THE GUARDIAN - VANITY FAIR - THE ATLANTIC - THE WEEK - THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS - LIT HUB - KIRKUS REVIEWS - THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY - BOSTON.COM - PUREWOW ONE OF BARACK OBAMAS FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR WINNER OF THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION WINNER OF THE FOLIO PRIZE FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE FOR FICTION LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE LONGLISTED FOR THE ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE Impossibly smart, full of beauty, heart and insight. Everyone should read this book. --Tommy Orange, author of There There A Great American Novel for our time. -- Vanity Fair Unforgettable, down to its explosive final sentence. . . . [Luiselli] audaciously stretches the bounds of storytelling. -- Entertainment Weekly Virtuosic. . . . The brilliance of the writing stirs rage and pity. It humanizes us. -- The New York Times Book Review This is a novel that challenges us, as a nation, to reconcile our differences. . . . [The] writing shimmers like its desert setting. -- The Washington Post Electric, elastic, alluring, new. -- The New York Times A remarkable feat of empathy. --NPR [A] brilliantly intricate and constantly surprising book. -- The New Yorker [Luisellis] language is so transporting, it stops you time and again. -- O, The Oprah Magazine Like all great novels. . . . Lost Children Archive is unquestionably timely, [but] it also approaches a certain timelessness. -- Los Angeles Times Stunning. . . . Uniquely rewarding--and even life-changing. -- The Seattle Times Delicate, funny, effortlessly poetic. -- The Guardian Passionate. -- The New York Review of Books Rollicking. . . A highly imaginative and politically deft portrait of childhood within a vast American landscape. -- Harpers Magazine About the Author Valeria Luiselli was born in Mexico City and grew up in South Korea, South Africa, and India. An acclaimed writer of both fiction and nonfiction, she is the author of the essay collection Sidewalks ; the novels Faces in the Crowd and The Story of My Teeth ; and, most recently, Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions . She is the recipient of a MacArthur Genius Grant; the winner of two Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, an American Book Award, and the 2021 Dublin Literary Award; and has been nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award twice and the Kirkus Prize on three occasions. She has been a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree and the recipient of a Bearing Witness Fellowship from the Art for Justice Fund. Her work has appeared in The New York Times , Granta , and McSweeneys , among other publications, and has been translated into more than twenty languages. She lives in New York City.