Artist David Corbett

Writer David Corbett’s fascination with social strife in El Salvador continues in his fourth novel Do They Know I'm Running?. Roque Montalvo, barely 18 years old, lives in California and takes care of his sick Salvadoran aunt and his brother, an Iraq war veteran who has returned home wounded and broken. When immigration officials deport Roque’s uncle to El Salvador, the boy enters a dangerous world run by Salvadoran gangs in order to smuggle his uncle back into the States. Corbett wades through several difficult political issues, principally the venomous relationship between government officials and Latino immigrants, and the fact that American officials have pointed to a severely damaged El Salvador as a model for rebuilding Iraq.

Updated 03/10/2010