From the New York Times best-selling author of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry, this is the second stunning novel in Gabrielle Zevin's Birthright series. In this thrilling novel about a reluctant mobster, Anya tries to shatter the ties that bind--with deadly consequences. "Every time I think I'm out, they pull me back in."- Michael Corleone, The Godfather Since her release from Liberty Children's Facility, Anya Balanchine is determined to follow the straight and narrow. Unfortunately, her criminal record is making it hard for her to do that. No high school wants her with a gun possession charge on her rap sheet. Plus, all the people in her life have moved on: Natty has skipped two grades at Holy Trinity, Scarlet and Gable seem closer than ever, and even Win is in a new relationship. But when old friends return demanding that certain debts be paid, Anya is thrown right back into the criminal world that she had been determined to escape. It's a journey that will take her across the ocean and straight into the heart of the birthplace of chocolate where her resolve--and her heart--will be tested as never before.

"This book looks at the role illegality or undocumentedness plays in our society and economy. It shows how the status was created, and how and why people, especially Mexicans and Central Americans, have been assigned this status. The first three chapters look at the histories of social exclusion. One looks specifically at the Mexican and Guatemalan contexts to understand why such large numbers of people from these countries enter the United States without documents, and how those who do so understand their own motivations. Two chapters focus on the role of illegality in the economy. Undocumented people tend to work in three different kinds of jobs: jobs that have been historically marginalized, like those in agriculture; jobs that have been downgraded from well-paid, unionized work to low-wage labor, like meatpacking; and newly booming job categories that underlie post-war consumerist prosperity like landscaping and childcare work. One chapter looks at children and families, focusing especially on the experiences of undocumented youth and youth with undocumented parents, and at the leadership role that undocumented youth have taken in the undocumented rights movement. One looks at the dizzying complexity of status to point out that virtually nobody really understand what "illegal" means. It looks at the detention system and the interests behind it. Finally, the last chapter explores the different "solutions" to the problem of undocumentedness that have been proposed and implemented over time, and shows why they have failed. Undocumentedness is deeply imbedded in global and national political and economic systems, and the concept itself must be understood and challenged in order to create a more just system. "--

" A Courtship After Marriage places sex and marriage at the heart of modernity's making. Hirsch's innovative study of marriage-making in transnational Mexican families offers a fascinating look at the opportunities cross-border migration provides for reconstructing gender and rediscovering pleasure. This ambitious, well-crafted book speaks to anthropologists, demographers, and public health specialists, while transcending the divides between them."—Susan Greenhalgh, author of Under the Medical Gaze: Facts and Fictions of Chronic Pain "Jennifer Hirsch is one of the new wave in demographic scholars that takes culture seriously. Her book is a model of engaged, policy-relevant scholarship that achieves its warrant through deep contextualization in the everyday experience of its subjects. Beautifully written, rigorously analyzed, and almost novelistic in its nuance and detail, this study of marriage, migration, and fertility puts the people back into demography and makes one of the most powerful contributions to policy-relevant social science that I have seen in a long time. A work of beauty, sensitivity, and scholarship that sets a new standard for all that follows."—Tom Fricke, author of Himalayan Households: Tamang Demography and Domestic Processes "In this engagingly written and keenly observed ethnography of Mexican marriages in Atlanta and in small Mexican towns, Jennifer Hirsch brings love, sex and romance to Mexican immigration scholarship, and presents a compelling case for the rise of companionate marriages and ideals of spousal intimacy. This book will appeal to anyone interested in gender studies, immigrant families and the social and cultural contexts of fertility."—Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, author of Domestica: Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence "A groundbreaking study. Gracefully written, yet at the same time rigorously argued, this book reminds us of the poetry and dignity that can be found in ordinary lives and of the dreams and aspirations that sustain human agency even in the face of severe social and economic constraints. This is a major contribution to our understanding of migration, gender, sexuality, and social change in contemporary life and a model for engaged social research at its very best."—Richard Parker, author of Bodies, Pleasures and Passions "Hirsch has written a superb, insightful, and original study of Mexican migrants and the challenges of marital devotion and separation they face across time and space. Exemplary in its detail and rigor, Courtship brings us into the lives of men and women in Georgia and Jalisco, shows us the risks they take to create modern forms of intimacy, and reconceptualizes how we should view sexualized companionship, procreation, and engendered pleasures. This book will become a gold standard ethnography in medical anthropology, public health, and transnational migration studies."—Matthew C. Gutmann, author of The Romance of Democracy: Compliant Defiance in Contemporary Mexico "Hirsch’s engaging analysis of gender relations among immigrant Mexicans in Atlanta and in the Mexican community from which they come, shows how migration affects women's and men's roles, the place of sexuality in building marital intimacy, struggles over contraceptive use, and power relations in the couple. Using detailed ethnographic examples, she examines the trend toward companionate couplehood, and demonstrates both struggles and triumphs as young Mexicans and Mexican-Americans strive to create marriages that combine the strengths of traditional respect-based bonds with the advantages of new relationships built on trust."—L.A. Rebhun, author of The Heart Is Unknown Country: Love in the Changing Economy of Northeast Brazil

This book presents the history of the Gomez, an elite family of Mexico that today includes several hundred individuals, plus their spouses and the families of their spouses, all living in Mexico City. Tracing the family from its origins in mid-nineteenth-century Mexico through its rise under the Porfirio Diaz regime and focusing especially on the last three generations, the work shows how the Gomez have evolved a distinctive subculture and an ability to advance their economic interests under changing political and economic conditions. One of the authors' major findings is the importance of the kinship system, particularly the three-generation "grandfamily" as a basic unit binding together people of different generations and different classes. The authors show that the top entrepreneurs in the family, the direct descendants of its founder, remain the acknowledged leaders of the kin, each one ruling his business as a patron-owner through a network of clienty2Drelatives. Other family members, though belonging to the middle class, identify ideologically with the family leadership and the bourgeoisie, and family values tend to overrule considerations of strictly business interest even among entrepreneurs.