When a 1950s rural Mexican family of nine is forced to resettle in an urban American metropolis, its cultural clash is hopeful, exhausting, and thorny. Read all about it in "Of Dreams & Thorns."This book is not a "woe is me, immigrant, life-is-so-unfair" kind of story. There are no victims here. Rather, it is a portrait of the character and passions of one man, his family, and his fellow life-travelers in an immigrant community. It is also a landscape, or tapestry that captures the splendors of this collection of characters that only comes from an intimacy with their various human dimensions - warts and all. You will meet Ramiro, a strong-willed, self-reliant, deeply passionate man, who is at times a dreamer, sometimes defiant, sometimes tyrannical, but always in control of the ship that carries his lovely wife, Eliza, and their seven children. Ramiro's hopes and dreams are modest and realistic, yet, as the title suggests, the book shows that a man's best plans can often go astray. Indeed, it is Ramiro's - and his family's - resilience and courage in fighting for his beliefs, that will capture your heart and imagination.