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A review by enobong
American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins
challenging
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
When sixteen members of her family are murdered in a revenge kill by the drug cartel that has overrun Acapulco, Lydia Quixano Perez and her eight-year-old son Luca must flee Mexico buy any means possible if they have any hope of surviving.
Please, please, please, check out this book on Goodreads, preorder it wherever you buy books, reserve it at your local library, do whatever you need to do to read this book. This book will make you feel uncomfortable and it should. @jeaninecummins is responsible for the new line between my eyebrows because I read this novel in a constant state of unease.
It is brilliant. It is horrifying and too real (if such a thing is possible) and absolutely brilliant. Cummins writes about the drug cartels from the point of view of the victims. She highlights the everyday people who are used as collateral damage for some evil men. There is no glamorising or romanticising but the evil is shown for what it is.
And then there's Lydia. A middle class, working mother and wife. A business owner who had the bad luck of befriending the wrong man and marrying a man who dared to do what others wouldn't and unmask the crimes of the cartels. Lydia is many of us. She lives comfortable and feels bad when she hears about what migrants are going through every day but she never imagines she'll ever be one. And then her world is absolutely obliterated and what Cummins delivers is a painfully account of a mother risking everything she has left to give her son the chance of survival.
I believe that writers can and should write about anything but if you're going to write about a world you don't inhabit then you have to do the hard work of research. Cummins did the work and it shows. It's been called our generations' GRAPES OF WRATH, which I agree with. I'm also going to say fans of THE ROAD by Ian McCormick should read this too. What's terrible is that this isn't post-apocalyptic but a depiction of the world we live in.
I'm going to end with a quote from a mural in Tijuana: On this side, too, there are dreams.
Please, please, please, check out this book on Goodreads, preorder it wherever you buy books, reserve it at your local library, do whatever you need to do to read this book. This book will make you feel uncomfortable and it should. @jeaninecummins is responsible for the new line between my eyebrows because I read this novel in a constant state of unease.
It is brilliant. It is horrifying and too real (if such a thing is possible) and absolutely brilliant. Cummins writes about the drug cartels from the point of view of the victims. She highlights the everyday people who are used as collateral damage for some evil men. There is no glamorising or romanticising but the evil is shown for what it is.
And then there's Lydia. A middle class, working mother and wife. A business owner who had the bad luck of befriending the wrong man and marrying a man who dared to do what others wouldn't and unmask the crimes of the cartels. Lydia is many of us. She lives comfortable and feels bad when she hears about what migrants are going through every day but she never imagines she'll ever be one. And then her world is absolutely obliterated and what Cummins delivers is a painfully account of a mother risking everything she has left to give her son the chance of survival.
I believe that writers can and should write about anything but if you're going to write about a world you don't inhabit then you have to do the hard work of research. Cummins did the work and it shows. It's been called our generations' GRAPES OF WRATH, which I agree with. I'm also going to say fans of THE ROAD by Ian McCormick should read this too. What's terrible is that this isn't post-apocalyptic but a depiction of the world we live in.
I'm going to end with a quote from a mural in Tijuana: On this side, too, there are dreams.