Twelve-year-old Jose Maldonado used to dream of becoming a fine artist. But this son of a poor Mexican farmer now focuses on survival, not art. After Jose’s mother died, his father left to work in the United States, leaving Jose on his own in Mexico. When it’s time for father and son to reunite, things go terribly wrong. Jose’s attempt to cross the border is harrowing, and his stay at a migrant worker camp turns into a nightmare, forcing him to flee for his life. Hiding out in a church seems a wise thing to do—until the blood dripping from his wounded shoulder lands on a statue of Christ. Now everyone thinks the statue itself is bleeding. Jose’s accidental “miracle” kick-starts a media frenzy—and threatens the future of an entire town. Theodore Taylor's riveting story of faith and desperation inspired the September 2003 Showtime movie The Maldonado Miracle, directed by Salma Hayek. THEODORE TAYLOR (1921-2006), an award-winning author of many books for young people, was particularly known for fast-paced, exciting adventure novels. His books include the bestseller The Cay, Timothy of the Cay, The Bomb, Air Raid--Pearl Harbor!, Ice Drift, The Maldonado Miracle, and The Weirdo, an Edgar Award winner for Best Young Adult Mystery. GUTIERREZ WAS pointing to a much-used Pemex road map spread over an up-ended wooden crate. He said, "Now, pay attention. You will cross here late tonight. I will already have gone through customs and immigration. Look closely. Right here." The heavy finger was at a place in California opposite the Mexican border town of Tecate. Jose glanced over at the stranger from San Diego. He was a stocky man about forty. A pocho, an American of Mexican descent. He was speaking in Spanish because Jose understood very little English. Jose nodded, but his legs suddenly felt weak. It was the same old problem. He knew he should be excited, but all he felt was fear. Gutierrez went on as if he did this several times a week. "You'll ride in the trunk of my car until we are far away from the border. Many people make the mistake of traveling the big highway, and they are caught here at the checkpoint near Oceanside." The thick finger tapped again. Jose thought about men in uniform holding a flashlight to his face; a ride to jail in a patrol car. "We won't do that," Gutierrez said. "We'll go on the back roads. East to Jacumba, then north again up through Pine Valley, here by Escondido, taking a dirt road to skirt another roadblock, then on to Elsinore, and finally back on the main road here at San Juan Capistrano." With the exception of that last place, where there was a famous mission, Jose had never heard of any of them. He studied the map and tried to make his voice deeper, more manly. "Is this the best way?" Gutierrez nodded and removed his glasses, tucking them into his shirt pocket. He smelled of hair tonic. "Yes, Jose. Your father agreed. We'll pick him up in Oxnard tomorrow. All the arrangements have been made." Jose wondered what the arrangements were; where Oxnard was. He wished he'd been able to talk to his father, though not much would have resulted. "Except that you are skinny, you don't look like your father. You don't have his height," Gutierrez commented. That was true. Over six feet tall, Hector Maldonado Alvarez had very little meat on him. When he had his shirt off and was lifting something heavy, his ribs projected like steel rims. His face was sharp and bony, like his wrists. It was a mellow red-brown. He had told Jose that their blood was Spanish and Indian. Jose was short, wiry, black-haired. His large, soft eyes were unlike those of his father. They were his mother's eyes. Long lashed. Slightly embarrassed, and not knowing what else to say, Jose answered simply, "No, I do not." He reached down to scrub Sanchez's thick neck. The big mongrel had been watching Gutierrez from the moment the old car had driven up. He was splotched black and brown and had one discolored eye. It was greenish. His coat was like a matted, worn shag rug. His head seemed oversized for his body, the nose flat like a cow's. His tail had been accidentally mashed off midway, so that it was neither long nor short. It looked strange, especially because hair refused to grow on the last inch of it. There was nothing there but gray skin. Gutierrez shifted on his sandals. "The money," he said. "Half now." For a moment, Jose thought about what to do. Then he said, "Go outside, please, señor." Gutierrez laughed. "I am doing your father a favor. Don't be suspicious of me, boy." But he shrugged and waddled out into the sunlight. Jose dragged the empty box to the rear of the room and stood up on it, feeling along the top of the beam beneath the tile roof for the stack of bills. He had counted them a dozen times. The other half of the smuggling fee, payable after Gutierrez delivered Jose to his father and then took them on somewhere else, was buried outside in a coffee can. Dropping down off the box, he c