Byron Park

Araceli the Refugee: an Immigration Novel Byron Park

This is the story of a refugee's struggle to seek asylum and a "green card" in the United States. Araceli Sandoval, a teenage college student, fled from her homeland in 1982 after she was abducted, raped and shot by a death squad during El Salvador's tragic civil war. She survived her physical wounds, but nearly went mad from posttraumatic stress during her desperate search for peace, first in Mexico and then in the United States. This novel focuses on the life of an innocent person transformed into an outlaw and a fugitive during her flight from persecution, and then subjected to a Kafkaesque legal battle by a government determined to deport her to her native land and certain death. Byron Park, a former INS officer, is a veteran immigration lawyer in San Francisco specializing in deportation defense. He is now a partner in the law firm of Park and Taylor.