Stranger

By the winner of the prestigious Giller Prize, David Bergen's electrifying novel is a profoundly intelligent, unflinchingly honest portrayal of modern immigration, exploitation, inequality and vulnerability. Iso Perdido is a young Guatemalan woman who works in a fertility clinic where she tends to the rich women who visit for the supposed conception-enhancing properties of the local lake. She is the lover of Eric, the American doctor in residence. But when an accident forces him to leave Guatemala abruptly, Iso is abandoned, heart-broken and pregnant. After the birth, her daughter is abducted and taken to America to live with the father beyond Iso's reach. Determined to reclaim her stolen child, Iso follows a trail north descending into a world full of danger. She crosses illegally into the United States where the rich live in safe zones, walled away from the indigent masses. Travelling without documentation, and with little money, Iso must penetrate this place of menace and shifting boundaries, uncertain of who to trust, wary that a wrong choice could mean losing her daughter forever. Intense and beautifully rendered, Stranger is a powerful and affecting novel for our times.