“One of the first bullets comes in through the open window above the toilet where Luca is standing. He doesn’t immediately understand that it’s a bullet at all, and it’s only luck that it doesn’t strike him between the eyes. The wash of bullets that follows is loud, booming, and thudding, clack-clacking with helicopter speed. There is a raft of screams, too, but that noise is short-lived.”
Those are the opening lines to Jeanine Cummins novel American Dirt. Luca is eight years old, and only because he and his mother Lydia are in the bathroom do they survive the slaughtering of fifteen family members by a drug cartel. His journalist father published a story about the drug lord Javier that resulted in the murders.
Before she knew his profession, Lydia had developed a friendship with Javier, who frequented her bookstore. With no time to mourn their family, Lydia and Luca must run from their home in Acapulco north to the United States to seek refuge with family in Arizona. It’s a journey of several thousand miles, first by foot, then by hopping on and off La Bestia (the trains that move cargo north), and finally with a mule who leads them through the heartless desert for several days. Along the way they make friends with others who are traveling north for their own reasons, either jobs or safety.
This is an incredibly well written, heart-wrenching novel, based on facts. In the author’s note, Cummins says, “In 2017, a migrant died every twenty-one hours along the United States-Mexico border.” If you want to understand what drives people to risk their lives to come to the United States, then you must read American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins.
