Across A Hundred Mountains

The opening pages of Across a Hundred Mountains alternate between two women’s stories: Adelina’s and Juana’s. In Mexico, an old man leads Adelina to a pile of rocks near the United States border and tells Adelina that this is where her father is buried. To the man’s surprise, Adelina begins digging through the rocks, intending to collect her father’s bones and bring them back to her mother. When Adelina uncovers her father’s rosary, she knows the man was telling the truth, and that she has finally found her father after searching for him for nineteen years. Adelina has her father cremated, and boards a plane from Tijuana to Mexico City.

Adelina remembers when she first arrived in Los Angeles at the age of 16, in order to search for her father. She arrives in Los Angeles with very little money, and no place to stay. That night, at a park, she meets a man who tells her to go to a nearby apartment building and ask for Don Ernesto, the manager. He says, “‘The rooms are small. They’re dirty and full of roaches and mice, but the rent is cheap. And it’s a lot better than being here in the park’” (24).