The Everything I Have Lost

A girl experiences life on both sides of the US-Mexican border in Sylvia Zéleny’s daring middle grade novel.

In this sensitively told novel, Julia—soulful and yearning, yet also angry and sometimes hard-talking—feels trapped between her parents. She has grown up in Juárez, Mexico, just across the border from El Paso, known for its violence, its drug cartels, and for the girls and women who disappear there.

In compelling diary reflections that follow her from ages 12 to 15, Julia’s narration swings between universal teen preoccupations—worries about clothes, her first day at school, a new house, boys—and extreme fears of being shot on the street and wondering if her father works for the narcos. Eventually, the environment becomes so dangerous that Mamá sends Julia and her little brother to live with family members in El Paso.

Zéleny first wrote The Everything I Have Lost in Spanish, then rewrote it in English. Conveying the grim challenges Julia faces, Zéleny creates a fierce, funny, and full-of-feeling protagonist whose staccato diary entries pull the reader along.