The Barbarian Nurseries is a contemporary novel set in Los Angeles and other neighborhoods in Orange County. Author Héctor Tobar is a native of Los Angeles and is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and journalist, previously writing weekly columns and acting as a foreign correspondent for the LA Times. Both this novel and his previous work of fiction focus primarily on the lives of immigrants in California. The Barbarian Nurseries was a New York Times Notable Book and won the California Book Award Gold Medal for Fiction.

Plot Summary

The Barbarian Nurseries begins in a gated community in Orange County where Scott and Maureen Torres-Thompson live with their three children, Brandon, Keenan, and baby Samantha. They used to have three Mexican employees but have recently let two of them go due to financial struggles brought on by bad investments after the sale of Scott’s failing startup, MindWare. The one remaining member of the household staff is Araceli, the live-in maid who the family refers to as “Madame Weirdness,” “Sergeant Araceli,” and “Little Miss Sunshine,” due to her taciturn nature (28).

The Torres-Thompsons and their social group believe “themselves to be cultural sophisticates” but never truly acknowledge their Mexican American staff or their culture (32). Both are discontented but never truly communicate with one another.

During an argument over money Maureen spent to replace the ill-advised tropical plants in the backyard with a succulent garden, Scott pushes her into a coffee table. The next morning, both parents separately decide to leave for a few days, each believing the other is still present to care for the boys—since Maureen takes baby Samantha with her. They also assume that “Araceli would be there to keep the household from falling apart and the boys from going hungry” (124).

Araceli finds both parents gone with no explanation and, despite her best efforts, cannot contact either of them. Left alone with the boys for four days, Araceli decides to try to take them to their grandfather’s house. She cannot simply leave them because this “would be an abdication of responsibility, even if they had been left in Araceli’s care against her will” (133).

With only an address scribbled on a very old photograph of the grandfather as a clue, Araceli takes the two boys on a journey through Los Angeles. When they reach the address, “it was clear that el abuelo Torres did not leave here, and could not live here, because everything about the place screamed poverty and Latin America” (178). However, Araceli does not give up; helped along by a few people she meets along the way, she next takes them to Huntington Park, hoping the grandfather lives there.

By this time, Scott and Maureen have arrived home and found the house empty. Horrified at the realization of what they have done, they call the police, who, along with the media, blow the story out of proportion. It isn’t long before headlines read: “Close the border! California boys in alien kidnap drama” (242).

The boys, whose vivid imaginations have spun the journey into a fantastical quest, see themselves on tv and call their parents. Araceli decides to leave before the police arrive, since she realizes she has no immigration papers. However, the police chase her down and arrest her.

After her initial release, she is re-arrested in large part due to Ian Goller, the Assistant District Attorney, who hates “naïve Latin American immigrants” like Araceli, as he believes they are a waste of the legal system’s time (256).

Separately, Araceli and the Torres-Thompsons live through “this media plague” (296), as the public takes sides. They “marvel at the power of television and newspapers to make [them] known to strangers” (360). After a short trial, during which Araceli refuses a plea bargain which would have gotten her immediately deported, she is freed.

To escape the immigration officials, who will likely be looking for her, Araceli escapes with Felipe, a man she likes, across the desert. In the end, she gets to choose whether to go back to Mexico or stay in the US. She points away into the distance and tells him: “that way” (422).