Although we focus lots on travel for leisure here at Gadling, we definitely look at it from other angles as well, and recognize that not all journeys are for fun. Or for real, for that matter — Today’s book choice is a fictional adventure about an unemployed schoolteacher in Bolivia on a desperate quest for an American visa. Journalist and author Juan de Recacoechea was born in La Paz, Bolivia, and after almost twenty years working as a reporter in Europe, returned to his native land, where he has focused instead on fiction. American Visa is his first novel to be translated into English. In this recently released thriller, former high school teacher Mario Alvarez’s dream of emigration leads him on a series of mysterious and corrupt twists and turns as he tries to escape his past and chart a new course to America, with hopes of a reunion with his grown son in Miami. Although fictional, this book touches on many of the issues surrounding the immigration debate, as seen from the Latin American perspective. The author is appearing at D.C.’s Politics and Prose today at 3 pm and will then quickly make his way to Florida for an event at Books & Books in Coral Gables tomorrow at 6 pm.