As a reporter for Newsday in the mid-1980s, Barbara Fischkin wrote a weekly feature for a year about members of the Almonte family and their experiences with immigration from the Dominican Republic to New York City.

"[1] Kirkus Reviews states, "Fischkin smoothly and gracefully tells a complex tale by interweaving parents' and children's vastly different perspectives, as well as an account of the Dominican Republic's troubled history.

"[5] Ed Morales, a staff writer for The Village Voice, in a review published in Newsday, notes the role Fischkin's 1980s reporting had on bringing attention and eventual action to address Almonte children who were initially denied entry to the United States, and writes, "While Fischkin shows that the deep ambivalence of the immigrant experience has been passed on to a new generation, she also provides a timely reminder that the suffering and exhilaration of that experience is at the core of American identity.

"[8] In a review for Library Journal, Tricia Gray says Fischkin "gives an intimate account of immigrant life in contemporary America, with all the bureaucratic quagmires, language barriers, and transformations that are involved", and that the "masterfully woven tale strikes at the heart of the American identity".

[3] Philip Herter writes in a review for the St. Petersberg Times, "Dominican history is key, especially the miserable years of the Trujillo dictatorship, a grim regime supported by Washington, when thousands disappeared and social progress withered.