KIRKUS Book Review

SHADOWS ACROSS THE LINE

VOICES OF THE DISPLACED

by Senol Tasdelen ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 17, 2025

A colorful and stirring assemblage of firsthand immigration accounts.

A collection of migration stories from around the world.

Tasdelen begins his book with some sobering numbers from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees: In 2024, over 123 million people sought refuge after being displaced from their homes. Thousands of people, including many children, die every day from exposure on roads or in poorly supplied temporary refugee camps, and many thousands more—the lucky ones—must live in foreign lands, missing home while often being suspected or despised by their new neighbors. Tasdelen asserts that “all people deserve to live freely wherever they wish without borders and barbed wire,” and he presents the stories of refugees from a wide variety of countries and circumstances, largely in their own words. The subjects include 25-year-old barber Carlos, who fled crime-ridden San Pedro Sula in Honduras for the United States, “escaping widespread violence, poverty, and food insecurity intensified by climate change.” There’s also Lucia, a 36-year-old mother of two who left Mexico with her children, spending time in refugee camps that “entailed daily battles, but [she] strived not to lose hope that one day [they] would cross the border for a better life.” Other migrants had different destinations in mind; Ali Shah, for instance, fled his home in Adiyaman, Turkey, due to worsening economic conditions and religious discrimination, and he eventually ended up seeking asylum in Toronto. (“There wasn’t an arrest situation like in America, and the police treated people well,” he recalls. “Thinking about this made me feel better.”) The diverse combination of voices is effective—these are the human stories that often get lost in statistics or news headlines, and the people in those stories are given the opportunity here to relate their narratives as they experienced them. The stories come from a range of decades, but readers should be warned that the violent and largely illegal anti-immigration measures of President Donald Trump pervade almost every corner of this book, setting the hope and humanity of the displaced in stark relief.

A colorful and stirring assemblage of firsthand immigration accounts.

Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2025

ISBN: 9781038359001

Page Count: 252

Publisher: FriesenPress

Review Posted Online: today

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | WORLD | GENERAL NONFICTION