How does the book end as it began ?

Emigration and smuggling is still the major theme at the end of the book. In the beginning of the story Enrique's mother, Lourdes, struggles in Honduras to support her young children, Belky and Enrique. She knows she will not be able to send her son and daughter to school past the third grade, and does not want them to grow up as she did, in extreme poverty. Like many other single Latina mothers in the recent decades, Lourdes leaves her home and family to travel to the United States so that she might send money home for her children. At the end of the story, , Enrique pays a smuggler to bring María Isabel to the United States. Jasmín remains in Honduras, to be cared for by Belky.