American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins
Living in Acapulco is Lydia. She is married to a lovely journalist and has a son named Luca who is the love of her life. Despite the fact that Acapulco is starting to exhibit signs of instability due to the cartels, Lydia’s life is often not too uncomfortable. Yet none of their lives will ever be the same after her husband’s candid biography of the newest drug lord is published.
When forced to run, Lydia and Luca end up joining the numerous individuals making the journey to America. Lydia quickly realizes that everyone is evading something. But where are they really racing to?
American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins
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The story of a mom and her son travelling through Mexico is engrossing. Along the road, they encounter violence, beatings, thievery, and other perils. They witness a man being murdered by a train and a buddy being raped. Also, they come across kind individuals who support them every step of the journey. Although this is not the focus of the narrative, you do get the impression that the region of Mexico they travel through is immensely different in terms of temperature, culture, attitudes, etc. It’s somewhat of a saga.
The author is a master at crafting rich, memorable tiny statements out of situations and thoughts. In this epic novel, Jeanine Cummins tells the account of a family who suffers a terrible loss and is compelled to become migrants in order to escape a cartel. Think of all the terrible things that can occur to migrants based on the news stories you have read or heard; practically all of those things occur to one of the characters in this book. In Acapulco, Mexico, Lydia Perez, her husband Sebastian, and her 8-year-old son Luca lead a straightforward yet contented life until a dreadful monumental day when everything abruptly changes. Sebastian, a newspaper reporter, pens a piece about the cartel that both he and Lydia deem to be of little significance.
Lydia runs a bookstore and has a connection to Sebastian’s reporting on the cartels. Lydia is also a business entrepreneur. In other words, they both make the fatally costly mistake of believing they are safe. In this book, Cummins focuses her descriptive writing on the migrants rather than the cartel. Cummins writes in the Author’s Note at the conclusion of the book that she intended to write about the migrant experience rather than cartel tactics. Lydia and Luca encounter several other migrants as they begin their journey to “El Northe.” Some of them are evil criminals who shouldn’t be trusted, while others are unfortunate innocent victims like themselves.
Although Lydia and Luca can’t identify who to trust and who to avoid, the plot forces them to make decisions on multiple occasions. When readers are also attempting to figure out whether Lydia and Luca are going to be deceived, robbed, or somehow hurt, Cummins successfully builds suspense. Although most migrant travellers are men, Lydia and Luca are particularly at risk because they are female and have a young child.
Among the people, Lydia and Luca choose to believe in are two sets of sisters and a 10-year-old boy. Cummins spends the majority of his time on these characters, along with Lydia and Luca’s main characters.
