Luiselli begins by documenting her volunteer work helping unaccompanied child immigrants fill out their intake questionnaire (the “40 questions” of the book’s subtitle) that she began in 2015. She translates for them as best she can, then passes the work on to lawyers who help find the child representation in court.

The work reminds Luiselli of the road trip she took in 2014 as a nonresident alien waiting on her family’s green card status. The first question on the child immigrant questionnaire—“Why did you come to the United States?”—is the same question she asks herself as the family goes on a road trip during their time of uncertainty (9). The green card application, though, is filled with frivolous questions about vice, whereas the child immigrant questionnaire “reveals a colder, more cynical and brutal reality” (10). Many of the children do not have basic information about themselves or do not know the names of their parents or where they are, and they are in America either to reunite with family or flee horrific circumstances.

On her road trip, Luiselli hears a radio story about the refugee crisis as thousands of children arrive from Mexico and Central America. She and her husband gather what information they can as they travel, and Luiselli focuses on the people who come to protest (some of them armed) the arrival of the refugee children; she wonders if the children would be welcomed with dignity if they weren’t brown.