Solito is the memoir of Javier Zamora, who recounts his journey from El Salvador to the United States when he was nine years old.

Traveling as an unaccompanied minor, Javier faces incredible and dangerous challenges in order to join his parents, who are already in California and have arranged for him to join them. Following the civil war in El Salvador, the country’s dire economic conditions prompted Javier’s father to leave the country to pursue greater financial opportunities for his family when Javier was only a year old. Consequently, Javier has no real memories of his father and is uncertain about how he will react when the two are reunited. When Javier was five, his mother left to join her husband, and though she regularly phones Javier, he misses her presence greatly.

With both parents living in America, Javier is left in the care of his grandparents and extended family; they offer him a sense of stability which allows Javier to become one of the brightest students in his school. When he is nine years old, the long-awaited phone call comes indicating that it is time for Javier to make the “trip,” which he has dreamed of for years. Don Dago, an experienced coyote (guide), is hired to organize Javier’s journey from El Salvador to the United States. Javier will travel with others who also hope to cross the American-Mexican border.

Javier’s grandfather is able to travel with Javier for the initial segment of the journey, which is a great source of comfort to the young boy. Soon, however, Grandpa is unable to continue because of traveling restrictions and leaves Javier in the care of Marcelo, who is from their hometown. Javier quickly determines that Marcelo has no particular interest in caring for him, and he gravitates toward other, more nurturing personalities. One of these is Patricia, a mother who is traveling with her daughter Carla; another is Chino, a nineteen-year-old who tells Javier that he reminds him of his own brother who died. 

As Javier’s group travels, they join up with others who have paid different coyotes. These groups come and go at strategic points of travel, but Javier’s core group, led by Don Dago, sticks together. Eventually, however, Don Dago himself abandons the group, leaving them to the guidance of other coyotes and then polleros, a term used to describe people who are tasked specifically with getting people across the American border. Javier’s family has paid Don Dago for two attempts to successfully cross.

The group’s first attempt to cross the border is unsuccessful. After making it to the American side, they are waiting for vans to pick them up when they fall asleep from the exhaustion of the long walk through the desert. Javier is awakened by screams of “La migra!” which is a slang term used to refer to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. The group frantically tries to escape, but Javier, Patricia, Carla, and Chino are captured.

After being detained for some time in what Javier refers to as a “cage,” he, Patricia, and Carla are taken back to the American-Mexican border and released to their “fake” home country. Although various polleros approach Patricia and offer to take them back across for a fee, she ignores their offers and instead insists on waiting there for Chino. Many hours later, Chino appears, and the group finds temporary shelter nearby.

They quickly make plans to arrange for the second trip which was covered in their initial payment to Don Dago. Within days, they are once again en route to meet a new pollero who promises to...