Is God watching? That is the painful yet honest question with which Leo O'Donovan opens Blessed Are the Refugees. It is a question that many immigrants ask themselves as they attempt to escape from the violence that mars their lives in Central America's Northern Triangle and marks their way through Mexico into the United States. It is a question that many who serve their humanitarian and legal needs across those countries ask ourselves whenever we face the reality that our actions may not free them from the suffering that drove them from their homeland or from the pain that our broken immigration system inflicts on them once they cross into ours. It is a question that accompanies readers throughout this heartfelt book with an implicit hope that reflecting on their painful experiences in light of the beatitudes will spark the ability to feel a solidarity that moves us to walk alongside.

Recent biblical and theological scholarship on migration has turned its attention to analyzing the multivalent significance of migrant experiences and the complex relationships that bind citizens and immigrants together. A strand of that work has begun focusing on the experiences of immigrant children who make their way from Central America, enhancing our understanding of the profound ways in which they express their faith (e.g., Gregory Lee Cuellar) or exercise their moral agency (e.g., Cristina Traina). Scott Rose and Leo O'Donovan have edited together a collection of texts that enriches that strand of the conversation by focusing on the spiritual wisdom that the interior lives of the immigrant children they serve at Esperanza Center reveals. In doing so, they join the few who are attentive to the spirituality of immigrant children (e.g., Elizabeth Conde-Frazier).

The collection includes nine chapters, one for each of the beatitudes, that reflect movingly on the experiences of immigrant children without either idealizing or denying their suffering. For the most part, it succeeds in achieving that hard task because each is grounded in the doing that Christian discipleship entails when walking alongside immigrants—whether as their lawyer or interpreter, in this case—as they face the vicissitudes of our country's broken immigration system. Each of the authors, including the director of Esperanza Center, a managing attorney, two volunteer attorneys, and a volunteer interpreter, allows the beatitudes to read the relationships that they are privy to. That humility breaks them open, and through them their readers, to the interior lives of immigrant children who are doing their best to confront the painful consequences of so much brokenness that they did not cause.

Still, the focus of the authors is on reflecting how the lives of the immigrant children they serve reveal each of the beatitudes. The subjects are the children themselves. Their lives are front and center. To that end, the authors treat the biblical text with the necessary care, in a simple yet not simplistic way that lets the beatitudes speak not just to the challenges that those who serve immigrants face, but most importantly, to “the pain and struggle of the children” themselves (xxiv). Two siblings, Ana Silvia Herrera Delgado and Jose Enrique Portillo Delgado, provide art that drives that point home in each of the chapters. Our country's immigration system keeps the siblings apart (one lives in the United States, the other in El Salvador). O'Donovan closes each chapter with a prayer that echoes a specific beatitude and, in the case of the final chapter, powerfully connects refugees to the presence of God today and moves readers to act.

Due to its careful attention, in light of the beatitudes, to the realities that immigrant children experience, this book is suitable for introductory college-level theology courses, courses that include a spirituality section, or courses that integrate Catholic social teaching or community engagement components. A note: the authors name and contextualize the physical abuse (without being explicit) that some immigrant children are escaping from in Central America, run into in Mexico, or fall prey to in the United States. Although they do so carefully and only when the reflection calls for it, some students, whether immigrant or citizen, might have suffered similar experiences and pain.