The Circuit

"'La frontera'...I heard it for the first time back in the late 1940s when Papa and Mama told me and Roberto, my older brother, that someday we would take a long trip north, cross la frontera, enter California, and leave our poverty behind." So begins this honest and powerful account of a family's journey to the fields of California -- to a life of constant moving, from strawberry fields to cotton fields, from tent cities to one-room shacks, from picking grapes to topping carrots and thinning lettuce. Seen through the eyes of a boy who longs for an education and the right to call one palce home, this is a story of survival, faith, and hope. It is a journey that will open readers' hearts and minds.

Francisco Jimenez immigrated with his family to California from Tlaquepaque, Mexico. As a child he worked in the fields of California, and the stories in The Circuit are largely autobiographical. He received both his master's degree and his Ph.D. from Columbia University and is now chairman of the Modern Languages and Literatures Department at Santa Clara University. He lives in Santa Clara, California, with his wife and three children.