American Dirt

American Dirt is an emotional and intense story that follows Lydia and her son as they flee cartel violence in Mexico and make the dangerous journey to the U.S. It’s a powerful tale of survival, motherhood, and the fight for freedom. The narration adds real emotion and urgency to their journey, making the audiobook hard to pause. A heartbreaking but hopeful listen that gives a human face to a difficult topic.

This book was engaging from start to finish. It begins with the horrific setting of a family massacre; committed during a birthday celebration at the home of Lydia and Sebastian. Lydia and her eight-year-old son, Luca, were the sole survivors. They hid themselves in a bathtub while listening in terror as gunshots rang out in the front yard, where family were barbequing chicken. Fifteen people were killed, including Lydia’s mother and her husband, Sebastian.There wasn’t time to grieve, or to make funeral arrangements for the victims. Lydia’s focus was on her and her son Luca’s safety. They left their home in Acapulco with utmost haste and urgency. Their destination was El Norte. Early in their journey, Lydia recollects the events which led to her family being targeted for annihilation. Her husband, Sebastian, was a journalist. He wrote an article profiling Acapulco’s new drug cartel potentate, a man she knew as Javier. She had met Javier when he entered her bookstore. They became friends, sharing an interest in poetry. She could not have imagined, in her wildest dreams, that this seemingly kind and cultured man, was head of a drug cartel. She could not have foreseen that the article Sebastian wrote would be read by Javier’s beloved daughter, Marta, who was away at college. Devastated by the news of her father’s nefarious deeds, Marta hung herself in her dorm room, provoking the vengeful wrath of Javier. So, along their perilous journey, Lydia had to watch her back, and keep a vigilant eye for potential sicarios employed by Javier.Cummins provides a searing description of Lydia and Luca’s trek to El Norte; a journey entailing fifty-three days and 2,645 miles from the site of the massacre. She gives the reader a poignant depiction of the people Lydia and Luca encounter along the way, beautifully illuminating their shared humanity. Cummins skillfully encapsulates the varied circumstances which led ‘El migra’ to leave their homes and family members. Some were escaping the tyranny of cartels. Some were avoiding becoming sex slaves. Some had been deported, and are now seeking a return to El Norte, and to a life offering an opportunity to earn a living, as modest and unassuming as that may be. A Ph.D. candidate was a deportee who joined Lydia’s group late in their journey.American Dirt is a must read. The gritty, intricate plot will keep you engrossed. The breadth and depth of the characters will enlighten and broaden an empathetic sensibility. It’s ending, culminating on American soil, will pull at the heartstrings.

Jeanine Cummins tells the story of a family that experiences a tremendous loss and are forced to become migrants running for their lives from a cartel in this epic tale. Imagine everything horrible that can happen to a migrant, based on the news stories that you’ve heard, and almost all of that happens to one of the characters in this novel. Lydia Perez, her husband Sebastian, and her 8-year-old son Luca live a simple but comfortable life in Acapulco, Mexico, when one terrible momentous day everything changes. Sebastian is a newspaper reporter, who writes a story about the cartel that both Sebastian and Lydia think is innocuous enough. Lydia is the business owner of a bookstore, but she also has a connection to Sebastian’s investigative reporting into the cartels. In short, they both judge wrongly that they are safe, and the price that they pay is devastatingly high.Readers should be weary Cummins does not shy away from any of the atrocities that happen to migrants. There are themes of death, suicide, trauma, rape, and kidnap throughout. Sex trafficking is implied at points. If you are currently triggered by any of these, this may not be the season for you to read this book.Cummins concentrates her descriptive prose on the migrants in this novel, not the cartel. In the Author’s Note at the end of the novel Cummins states that she wanted to write about the migrant experience, not the cartel practices as other books have done, and I think she successfully accomplished it. Cummins describes the Perez’s in relatable ways, as a “regular” Mexican family, whose actions happen to impact a cartel member, which causes their lives to forever be changed. Readers can almost picture their own family as being just like the Perez family, the way Cummins describes their values and everyday lives before they have little choice but to become migrants.As the main characters start on their travel to “El Northe,” Lydia and Luca meet several other migrants. Some of them are nefarious criminals and should not be trusted, and some are innocent victims of circumstance just like themselves. Of course, Lydia and Luca cannot tell who is trustworthy and who is not, but the plot backs them into corners several times, and they must decide. Cummins adequately creates suspense in those moments when readers are also trying to discern if Lydia and Luca are going to be betrayed, robbed, or otherwise harmed. Most of the migrant travelers are men, so Lydia and Luca are especially vulnerable being a woman and young child.Some of the characters that Lydia and Luca decide to trust include a pair of sisters, and another young boy who is 10. It is these characters, as well as the main characters of Lydia and Luca, that Cummins spends the most time on. The way Cummins describes her characters background and motivation made it easy for me to feel invested in their safely crossing the border. I think most readers will find they care about the primary migrant characters, and that feeling intensifies the story.Another complication of Lydia and Luca’s escape is how abruptly they leave. This was not a well-planned journey they decided to take. It is a spur-of-the-moment fleeing, and not from their house but from someone else’s residence immediately after a violent attack. Because of this, Lydia has just moments to grab what she can and make life altering decisions about where to go and how to get to “El Northe.” This plot line gives Cummins liberty to have Lydia explore different methods that migrants use to get to the border of America and cross. At points, these portions read more like a social studies textbook than a literary novel and I felt my attention slip from the story, however temporary.The method that Lydia embarks on is to jump on top of a series of trains that are traveling north. Cummins has Lydia reason through why this is the best of the equally horrible methods of traveling north. Her descriptions of how the migrants board the train, what it is like to travel on them, how they get off the train and what the repercussions are of using the trains are superb. I was left wondering how she could describe this experience of traveling so well without having jumped on top of a train herself to experience it.Although portions of the novel felt like I was reading Cummins research for a non-fiction book, I feel like I learned a lot about the experience of migrants. I confess that before reading this book I did not much consider the reasons for people to try to cross America’s border, how they do it, or the perils of doing so. I have a great deal of compassion for migrants, but being in the Midwest of the U.S., honestly most weeks not a thought crosses my mind about America’s borders. Therefore, having much to learn, I finished Cummins book feeling like I accomplished a more in-depth understanding of the life-threatening danger and hardships that migrants endure.I am vaguely aware there was some controversy about this book when it released. I believe this centered around the fact that Cummins herself is not Latin American, nor has she been a migrant. Certainly, I would love to read a first-hand account of a crossing written by a migrant. Realistically, I can also understand the difficulties a migrant would have to overcome in order to write about that experience. In the absence of a first-hand account, I think American Dirt is Cummins’s attempt to be an ambassador for migrants by raising to attention some of the terrifying experiences they go through. In my opinion, there are no silent allies, therefore I deeply appreciate what I can only assume is her successful attempt to honor the migrant experience by describing a fair depiction. I am grateful for the deeper compassion for migrants that it afforded me.

American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins is an incredibly moving and powerful novel. With that said, it’s a strange time to be reading a novel about migrants coming to the US in today’s time. The story about Lydia and her son running from a Mexican drug cartel after they killed her entire family is very moving and you feel heartbreak for them. Throughout the book the telling of how they made it from Acapulco to the US is very moving and terrifying. I don’t know how anyone would be able to do that. The story is so emotional and heartbreaking and brings you up and down in feelings with everything they go through. I know I couldn’t do it and I know it’s a book but I also believe there are people going through this to try to get to the US. All that aside, the writing was very good with very good written characters.

This book is about a horrific journey that no mother and child should ever have to make. It broke my heart. Very well written.

Fast paced book about mother and son escaping cartel killings. Well written, amazed by mother, how resourceful she was!