One Life tells the sto­ry of Esper­an­za an undoc­u­ment­ed Mex­i­can impris­oned in Louisiana accused of mur­der­ing her eleven-month old baby. As such she is fac­ing the death penal­ty. When she is vis­it­ed by Richard the mit­i­ga­tion spe­cial­ist who has been hired to comb the back roads of Mex­i­co and the U.S. to tell her sto­ry and save her life the bound­aries of both their des­tinies explode. One Life exam­ines the dif­fer­ence between prag­ma­tism and cyn­i­cism the indeli­ble links between sex death and love and the mean­ing of jus­tice. The point of depar­ture of One Life is the author’s own expe­ri­ence work­ing for lawyers in the U.S. who defend undoc­u­ment­ed Mex­i­cans fac­ing cap­i­tal mur­der charges. Its sym­pa­thet­ic por­trait of Mex­i­cans with­out papers is the oppo­site side of the coin that was played so mali­cious­ly against them in the past elec­tion cycle. The author’s under­stand­ing of immi­gra­tion and sense of social jus­tice was formed by his moth­er’s expe­ri­ence as a Holo­caust sur­vivor and his father’s as a Pol­ish-Jew­ish first-gen­er­a­tion American.