BEHOLD THE DREAMERS by Imbolo Mbue

Jende Jonga, his wife Neni, and their son are immigrants from Cameroon, living in Harlem.  Jende lands a good-paying job as the chauffeur for Clark Edwards, a Lehman Brothers executive, and his family. Neni is a pharmacy student, and together they hope to get permanent visas by applying for asylum.  Their immigration status is a constant source of stress, as is the question of whether Jende will remain employed as the subprime meltdown hits Wall Street.  His job status becomes even more tenuous when he and Neni find themselves helping Clark and his wife keep secrets from one another.  The Jongas’ dilemma would be an uncomfortable situation even if they were citizens, but knowing that they can be deported at any time makes their decisions about how to proceed through this quagmire even more significant.  This is not by any means the first or the best book about undocumented immigrants trying to negotiate a meandering and sometimes absurd path to residency.  The drama in the Edwards family and its effect on the Jongas sets this book apart, but, on the other hand, that drama is, well, overly dramatic.  We have adultery, drug abuse, and blackmail, and the whole scene just seems too overwrought.  Then, Jende suddenly becomes a completely different sort of character.  I get that he’s exhausted and extremely frustrated, but perhaps he has buried the heavy-handed aspects of his personality in the first part of the book that then surface when the going gets tough.  Also, doesn’t Mighty seem like an odd name for the Edwards’ youngest son?  I never did figure out if this was a nickname or what.  Their other son’s name is Vince, and every time I saw the name Vince Edwards on the page, I thought of the actor who played Dr. Ben Casey on TV back in the 1960s.