“Extraordinary.” –Stephen King “This book is not simply the great American novel; it’s the great novel of las Americas. It’s the great world novel! This is the international story of our times. Masterful.” –Sandra Cisneros También de este lado hay sueños. On this side, too, there are dreams. Lydia Quixano Pérez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She runs a bookstore. She has a son, Luca, … Quixano Pérez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She runs a bookstore. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while there are cracks beginning to show in Acapulco because of the drug cartels, her life is, by and large, fairly comfortable.
Even though she knows they’ll never sell, Lydia stocks some of her all-time favorite books in her store. And then one day a man enters the shop to browse and comes up to the register with a few books he would like to buy–two of them her favorites. Javier is erudite. He is charming. And, unbeknownst to Lydia, he is the jefe of the newest drug cartel that has gruesomely taken over the city. When Lydia’s husband’s tell-all profile of Javier is published, none of their lives will ever be the same.
Forced to flee, Lydia and eight-year-old Luca soon find themselves miles and worlds away from their comfortable middle-class existence. Instantly transformed into migrants, Lydia and Luca ride la bestia–trains that make their way north toward the United States, which is the only place Javier’s reach doesn’t extend. As they join the countless people trying to reach el norte, Lydia soon sees that everyone is running from something. But what exactly are they running to?
American Dirt will leave readers utterly changed. It is a literary achievement filled with poignancy, drama, and humanity on every page. It is one of the most important books for our times.
Already being hailed as “a Grapes of Wrath for our times” and “a new American classic,” Jeanine Cummins’s American Dirt is a rare exploration into the inner hearts of people willing to sacrifice everything for a glimmer of hope.
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American Dirt is an extraordinary piece of work, a perfect balancing act with terror on one side and love on the other. I defy anyone to read the first seven pages of this book and not finish it. The prose is immaculate, and the story never lets up. This book will be an important voice in the discussion about immigration and los migrantes; it certainly puts the lie to the idea that we are being besieged by ‘bad hombres.’ On a micro scale ― the story scale, where I like to live ― it’s one hell of a novel about a good woman on the run with her beautiful boy. It’s marvelous.
American Dirt is both a moral compass and a riveting read. I couldn’t put it down. I’ll never stop thinking about it.
Why do we read fiction? By immersing ourselves in the lives of fictional characters we gain emotional depth, breadth, and empathy. We become more human. I have never felt more changed ― or challenged ― by a book than I have by American Dirt. It’s truly a revelation.
This tough, powerful novel is an eye opener. It made me understand better why someone would give up the home they know and love to survive, and the grit required to cross that border. It is essential reading for our time.
If I were to make predictions, I’d say that AMERICAN DIRT, by Jeanine Cummins, is the one book that will emerge above the rest in 2020. It blew me away.
Here is the story of what many of the immigrants trying to reach America from Mexico and Central America experience. These are not murderers or rapists. The focus here is on women who are forced to leave the only homes they’ve ever known to escape violence, then must endure all sorts of further violence before finally making it here.
We’re talking a woman who owns a bookstore in Acapulco, whose husband, a journalist, is slaughtered for writing a piece on the drug cartels. We’re talking her 8-year-old son, the only other survivor of the slaughter. We’re talking a pair of teenage sisters from Honduras, whose beauty is their greatest curse. And these are only four of the main characters. Others are woven in with skill and daring.
The details of their journey are gut-wrenching, described in exquisite prose, with deep insight. Of all the news clips I’ve read about the harrowing trips many immigrants are forced to make for the most innocent, honest, and necessary of reasons, AMERICAN DIRT is head-and-shoulders above. It is so powerful, so real, that, at times, I actually had to put it down and read a bit of something lighter, before picking it up again.
Shame on me for being a coward.
More, shame on our current president for playing on every negative stereotype to vilify immigrants and keep them out of this country. Not only are his policies xenophobic, but they lack the compassion for which this country used to be known. If we are ever to make America great again, we need to restore those values now.
AMERICAN DIRT is fiction based on fact. Ms. Cummins is herself of mixed heritage and married to a man who was once illegal. She knows first-hand the utter terror of being pulled over for a minor traffic issue and wondering whether the man she loves — who is educated, employed, buys his own healthcare, and pays taxes — will be suddenly deported.
For those of us who care to understand the plight of immigrants — the threat of violence that makes them leave their homes and then risk their lives again and again to reach safe ground — AMERICAN DIRT is a must-read.
Riveting, timely, a dazzling accomplishment. Jeanine Cummins makes us all LIVE and BREATHE the refugee story.
American Dirt is one of the most highly anticipated book of the winter. It has shown up on numerous ‘best of’ lists and is getting a lot of positive attention. I tend to be a bit skeptical about a book that is so talked about and always wonder if the critics liked it but the average reader won’t – let me assure you that American Dirt not only belongs on best of January books but will be on BEST of 2020 books.
Lydia lives in Acapulco with her 8 year old son Luca and her husband Sebastian, a reporter. She owns a bookstore and surrounds herself with the books that she loves. She isn’t rich but her family and extended family live good honest hard working lives. Until Sebastian writes an article about the leader of a drug cartel in the area. At a family cookout, Sebastian and 15 other members of Lydia’s family are massacred by the cartel. Only Lydia and Luca survive and she knows that they must run if they are going to stay alive. They begin a trip to the United States where they know they will be safe. On the almost month long trip, they meet other migrants who help them as they are faced with robbery, corrupt police, hunger but mostly fear – fear of being successful in their journey and fear of the cartel who is still searching for her.
Even though I was anxious to know how Lydia’s journey ended, I read this book very slowly. The writing is exquisite and I highlighted many passages that were beautiful. I can’t say enough good things about this book.
Thanks to the publisher for a copy of this book to read and review. All opinions are my own.
I’m well aware of the controversy surrounding this novel. As an author, I’m sympathetic to the difficulty for a novelist doing her level best to thoroughly research a world she does not herself inhabit in order to communicate a certain lived experience of others, as well as emotional truth, in crafted language. I think Ms. Cummins reached for and accomplished that goal. I found the prose beautiful, and the story affecting. Of course it doesn’t represent the experience of all or even most undocumented immigrants. I understand that, and that there are, according to those of Latinx heritage, errors in terminology. In spite of that, my understanding was expanded and reading the novel was, for me, a profound experience.
So, the hype captured me as I have already read a number of “vetted” books on this subject and have lived within 100 miles of the border as well as outside of the US and been an “other” myself. This is a work of fiction that does not attempt in my view to “sell” anything but a story. A woman wrote about another woman. Must she be brown to tell this story? Males have written in female voices. No more? Is this great literature? It was a good read. The interesting part for me is that the more critically acclaimed books I read on the topic this year – one had far less on the migrants themselves- the struggles- and more about the personal journey of the Americans (who were “brown” people) and their children. It was a poetic piece. The other nonfiction told from a border patrol viewpoint presented the topic from many angles including crime and compassion. A family friend was a political refugee from South America as a toddler with his sister and parents, back when we were accepting political refugees. I have students who have fled domestic violence situations- less dramatic than portrayed here but desperate all the same. If any work of fiction can create compassion, it is worthwhile, in my opinion. I did not see any demeaning or belittlement. Perhaps my eyes are not open wide enough.
American Dirt is one of the best novels I have read. It’s realistic, poignant, beautifully written and well-researched. It’s the story of an affluent Mexican woman from Acapulco who is driven from he home when her family is massacred by a drug cartel, because her husband, a journalist, wrote a newspaper article about a local drug lord. The woman, Lydia, and her eight-year old son Luca find themselves a part of the great horde of migrants making their way to the United States in search of a better life. Along the way, they meet many memorable characters, most good, some evil. Most importantly, I gained a deep and lasting appreciation of the migrant experience.
American Dirt has been pilloried by some in the media who think that the author did not have the qualifications to write it, i.e., she is not Mexican, not a migrant, and did not live the experience herself. This is extremely wrong-headed. Ms. Cummins has done a great service for Mexican, Central American and South American migrants by popularizing their tragic experiences, much as John Steinbeck did for American tenant farmers during the dust bowl in Grapes of Wrath, and Herman Wouk for victims of the Holocaust in Winds of War. One does not have to be a member of an ethnic group to empathize with its members or accurately recount their experiences-basic humanity and a talent for writing and research is all that’s required. The book has also been criticized for fictionalizing a great tragedy of our times, but the novelist Ayn Rand knew that popular fiction is often a much more effective means of promoting social change than mere journalism is. The author has been accused of stereotyping Mexicans, but all I found here were well-drawn, complex characters. I verified her research continuously as I read the book, and I found no inaccuracies, from the destruction of the beautiful city of Acapulco by the cartels, the pestilence of gangs and warlords haunting the Mexican highways, or the horrors of riding La Bestia, the freight trains that carry the migrants on top of them, between borders. I was particularly heartened by Cummins’ descriptions of the services provided for migrants by ordinary Mexicans, who donate food, water, shelter and support to them in sympathy with their plight. Of course, some may say that my opinion is invalid, because I am not Mexican. But I say kudos to Ms. Cummis for her bravery, which is already resulting in unjust repudiation.
No book is perfect, including this one. The story did lag in places due to over-description. And perhaps Ms Cummins should have chosen a more plebian tragedy that caused her protagonist to be uprooted, although the murder of journalists, law enforcement and government official by cartels is rampant in Mexico. But these are minor quibbles about a very great and important book.
I was nine years old when I concluded that being a writer was the most important career in the world because books could make us cry and laugh and dream and envision another reality. The idea of being an art teacher or a music teacher or someone dedicated to God dropped by the wayside. I wanted to be a writer because of the great power of the pen, the way books change lives.
A book like American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins exemplifies the wisdom of the nine-year-old me. For in telling the riveting story of people who must leave their beloved homes to save their lives, Cummins gives faces to those we are told to fear, and when their stories move us we connect to the ‘other’ and experience our common humanity.
The cover blurb calls this novel “The Grapes of Wrath for our time.” Steinbeck’s novel was published in 1939 and was an instant best-seller in spite of being labeled “socialist propaganda.” The Depression and Dust Bowl had driven 5000,000 people to leave their homes and travel across America, hoping to find work–to just survive. Steinbeck showed America who these migrants were, how they were treated, how they suffered on their journey.
Today’s migrants also flee for their lives, not because of environmental degradation has destroyed their livelihood, but because of violence and lawlessness and human trafficking. They just want the freedom to survive.
American Dirt begins with an explosive chapter of horror and violence, with Lydia and her eight-year-old son in Lucas hiding, listening to the sound of sixteen family members being murdered. The choices made by Lydia and her journalist husband Sebastian brought them to this moment. Lydia was drawn to befriend Javier, a patron in her bookstore, unaware he was the head of a deadly cartel. And Sebastian wrote an expose’ on Javier for his newspaper.
As Lydia and Lucas flee and make their way from Acapulco north they accumulate a rag-tag family, Soledad and Rebeca, sisters from the idyllic cloud forest now controlled by a cartel, and Beto, a world-wise child from the garbage dumps. Other travelers exemplify the diversity of migrants–a teen trying to escape the cartel, men who go north for work, a grad student brought to America as a child, a middle-class mother in America legally who is arrested during her routine check-in.
These people encounter all the terrors of the migrant journey, learning to scramble onto moving trains, hunger and thirst and weariness, continual fear, capture and ransom, rape, abuse–and the charity of helpers.
I was literally brought to tears when a man escorts Lydia, Lucas, and the sisters through town, protecting them with his size and machete. When asked why he did this for migrants he replied, “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink,” with Lydia finishing, “A stranger and you welcomed me.”
I spent my entire adult life as the wife of a clergyman. I know both scripture and what is required of us and the many ways we justify our actions–or inactions– our sins of commission and omission. The ways we twist things, grab onto worldly values to sidestep doing what is right.
I also have seen how true faith is risk and perilous and how false faith separates, judges, and protects one’s self-interest.
History teaches that silence is consent, inaction is approval. Something must stir the public’s heart. Nothing does that like a good story.
The Grapes of Wrath caught Eleanor Roosevelt’s attention and she called for the government to look into migrant camp conditions. As Susan Shillinglaw notes, “Empathy is the signature of the book—an empathetic response to human suffering.”
And that is what American Dirt accomplishes.
I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.
This book is not simply the great American novel; it’s the great novel of las Americas. It’s the great world novel! This is the international story of our times. Masterful.
This was discussed at my book club last month, and everybody thought it was just so interesting! Lots of interesting characters and relationships.
What an amazing book. It’s an easy read, in that I could not put it down, but it’s a really difficult read too. A life of happiness ruined by a cartel, brutal bereavement followed by the flight of a prosperous business woman with her son to become a low-skilled worker and Outsider Mexican in Trump’s USA.
What an important, honest and well written book.
Audiobook- narration 5 stars
I really don’t know how I feel about the book. I know it’s fiction but it touched so close to real lives. The subject was heartbreaking and hard to read. It opened my heart to a different side of border crossing. I grew up near a border town in CA, gangs, drugs, crime and fear came with the illegal immigrants. Then a teen Mexican gang killed my BIL in LA. It was hard to feel any empathy. I’ve never heard their story, never saw it through the eyes of a mother. I’m not sure how I feel, did I like it ? Not really. Did it touch something deep down, yes. It may have changed something in me for the better, loosened the cold stone that was in me. I was challenged to read this book and I think I will thank them. It will stick with me for a long time.
In this story we watch a woman, a mother lose everything except her son to gang violence. Her dangerous trek to the USA through streets filled with cartel searching for her. Her heart bleeds pain and fear, but she has no time to deal with it she must save her son. I would have done the same and am grateful that I don’t have to.
I fell in love with the characters and the story was so good, I couldn’t put it down.
AMERICAN DIRT made me furious. I was furious I hadn’t written it, furious at our immigration policy, and furious at the critics who say Jeanine Commins is not “allowed” to write such a book because she’s not Latinx enough. Really? The book is a NOVEL. The definition of a novel is to entertain. It may be based on reality, but a novel is fiction, and it come out of the head and the heart of the writer. Kudos to Jeanine Cummins (who is party Puerto Rican ) for knocking this one out of the park. Throughout the book, I rooted for Lydia and Luca to get away from the cartel, thanked God for the generosity and goodness of the Mexican people who helped them (some did not, of course), and seethed that our immigration policy is so narrow minded, uninformed, rigid, and moldering on the desks of bureaucrats. Something needs to be done.
I closed this book and felt as if I’d walked in Lydia and Luca’s shoes. Their stories touched me, and brought home the plight of illegal immigrants, the needs/fears that lead them to take such drastic measures and the terrible dangers they face on their arduous journeys. I look forward to reading more books on this subject, especially from Latino authors.
A riveting fictional account of the perilous flight of victims of violence to El Norte, to a place of security and some freedom. Lydia and her son Luca, Rebecca and Soledad, all risking their lives daily to flee the threats of dangerous men. Thousands of miles on foot, on buses, on tops of freight trains, being smuggled over the border with the single-minded quest of survival. Cummins brilliant narrative transports the reader into the story, feeling the fear, the anxiety, the suffering, the heat, the hunger, the thirst and the unrelenting struggle to stay alive. Cummins writes with authenticity, as if she made this journey herself. A timely and masterful work. Excellent!
The journey of Lydia and Luca in American Dirt was heartbreaking. Their torment, both physical and emotional was unimaginable. This was definitely a remarkable story of love, strength and survival, one I will not forget.
When I picked up this book I had no idea about all the controversy surrounding it. All I know is that from the very beginning my heart was racing and I couldn’t put it down. Of course, afterwards that’s when I discovered how much attention it drew. I’m not one to get into debates or heated discussions, so I’m just going to share my opinion. I loved it. Because it left me with an incredible sense of emotion. That’s what a good book does. I felt such empathy for immigrants, and I think that’s what this books’ intended purpose was. It was thought provoking and a real eye opener for me, and made me want to learn more about immigration. That’s one reason I read, to learn. I’m very glad I read this book.