legend. The Ciguapas are a fictional people that have dark skin, black eyes, with long, shiny hair that flows down the length their bodies. They have backward feet, so that when they walk their footprints point backward. The main character is named Guapa, and she is described as being bold, and has a fascination with humans to the point that it threatens the secrecy of the Ciguapas. The book features themes such as community, curiosity, difference, gender roles, and folklore. Alvarez has also published young adult fiction, notably Return to Sender (2009) about the friendship that forms between the middle school age son of a Vermont Dairy farmer, and the same-age daughter of the undocumented Mexican dairy worker hired by the boy's family. The children's lives offer many parallels, as both children lose a grandparent, and have one parent injured (Tyler's) or missing (Mari's), but other aspects of their lives are lived in sharp contrast according to their legal status. The book argues for a shared humanity that transcends borders and nationality, but does not shy from difficult issues like dangerous border crossing, criminal coyotes who exploit the vulnerable, and forced deportation. A similar young adult work that examines difficult political circumstances and children's experience of them is Before We Were Free (2003), told from the perspective of a young girl in the Dominican Republic in the months before and just after the assassination of dictator Rafael Trujillo. This novel addresses Dominican history in an accessible, riveting plot, describing aspects of the situation in 1961 little covered in most histories in English. Again, Alvarez uses the friendship between an American boy and Latina young girl as part of the story, but makes the relationship much less central in this earlier work. In the Name of Salomé (2000) is a historical novel based on the lives of Salomé Ureña and of Camila Henríquez Ureña, both Dominican writers and respectively mother and daughter, to illustrate how they devoted their lives to political causes. The novel takes place in several locations, including the Dominican Republic before a backdrop of political turbulence, Communist Cuba in the 1960s, and several university campuses across the United States, containing themes of empowerment and activism. As the protagonists of this novel are both women, Alvarez illustrates how these women, "came together in their mutual love of [their homeland] and in their faith in the ability of women to