Nine-year-old Betita and her parents fled Mexico after her uncle was
killed by the cartels, and settled in Los Angeles seeking political
asylum and safety in what her father calls Aztlan, the land of the
cranes; but now they have been swept up by by the government's
Immigration Customs Enforcement, her father deported back to Mexico,
and Betita and her mother confined in a family detention camp—Betita
finds heart in her imagination and the picture poems her father taught
her, but each day threatens to further tear her family apart.
