2019/44: Everyone Knows You Go Home -- Natalia Sylvester

They were married on the Day of the Dead, el Día de los Muertos, which no one gave much thought to in all the months of planning, until the bride’s deceased father-in-law showed up in the car following the ceremony. [loc. 110]

Martin marries Isabel: she can see his father's ghost, he refuses to look, because his father, Omar, walked out on the family years before. Martin didn't even know he was dead. But Isabel and Omar talk, each Day of the Dead, and Isabel discovers secrets her husband has never shared with her, and secrets that have been kept from him by his mother Elda and sister Claudia.

Martin's nephew Eduardo turns up, an undocumented migrant, and moves in with Martin and Isabel. From Eduardo, as well as Omar, Isabel learns about how and why Omar abandoned his wife and children -- and how that abandonment is rooted in Omar and Elda's journey from Mexico to Texas in 1981.

This novel has the structure of a Greek tragedy, an eye for an eye, the past reflected in the present and the present haunted -- literally and figuratively -- by the past. It humanises the 'immigrant threat' rhetoric that has become a mainstay of American politics, and illustrates the danger and fear of migrant journeys -- and the way that, even when they've built a new life, they can't stop being afraid.

I read this for the 'book from 2018 Reading Women Challenge shortlist' rubric of the 'Reading Women 2019' challenge.