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BOOK ENDS BOOK REVIEW ‘AMERICAN DIRT’
American Dirt (Flatiron Books, 2020, 387 pages, hardcover, $16.75) by Jeanine Cummins is the story of a middle-class Mexican woman, Lydia, and her 8-year-old son, Luca, whose lives are torn apart during a quinceañera party. Lydia’s husband, Sebastian, a newspaper reporter, had angered a cartel kingpin with an exposé story he wrote.
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The novel opens with the murder of 16 members of Lydia’s family, including her husband, forcing Lydia and Luca to run for their lives. Lydia manages to escape Acapulco using cash and the bus system, but when she tries to board a plane and can’t produce a birth certificate for her son, Lydia and Luca join a slew of undocumented immigrants hitchhiking on top of La Bestia (the train) to get to the United States (El Norte).
What makes this novel even more compelling is that Lydia had developed a strong friendship with the drug kingpin before she understood Javier’s role in extortion and killing sprees.
The novel takes readers on a journey as the pair travels across Mexico. Readers experience
knuckle-whitening jumps onto railcars from bridges and treks across a heat-stroke-inducing desert prone to unexpected rain and flash floods. As Lydia races to the border, she lives in constant fear that Javier’s army of gang members will hunt her, and her son, down to finish the job of executing Sebastian’s entire family. When a young man, Lorenzo, who wears the characteristic tattoo of a sickle dripping blood which signifies he is part of Javier’s gang, joins Lydia’s train car, she worries that Javier has ordered him to follow her even though Lorenzo assures them he is trying to escape from Javier’s gang just like she is.
Lydia’s strength is admirable as she tackles hurdle after hurdle. Her son’s charm is a necessary reprieve to offset the violent scenes in the novel. Luca’s adeptness at geography even helps save him and his mother from an uncertain fate.
Other characters include Rebeca and Soledad, two sisters from Honduras, and Beto, an asthmatic boy who is trying to escape the only life he’s known living on a garbage dump. The gripping plot will keep readers turning the pages to find out if Lydia and Luca will escape Javier’s men.
American Dirt is a #1 New York Times Bestseller, an Amazon Best Book of January 2020, and an Oprah’s Book Club Pick.
While lauded by many celebrities including Stephen King, the book has created controversy.
