And yet, according to the United States and its laws, Catalina is not American. Born in Ecuador, she was sent to live with her grandparents in New York when she was very young, after she miraculously survived the car crash that killed her parents. The problem is that Catalina and her new guardians are undocumented residents. Cornejo Villavicencio’s novel, then, is a meditation on an aspect of identity that is not a question of choice: nationality. It doesn’t matter that Catalina identifies as American rather than Ecuadoran. She could change any number of things about herself, but she can do nothing to alter the fact that she was born outside the arbitrary boundaries of the country she calls home.