American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins

LLP Week #241: “American Dirt” by Jeanine Cummins

When I was very small, my dad started talking to me about story structure. This might seem an odd topic to pose to a little girl, but Garry liked to connect with people through creativity, and to him, understanding story structure was essential to life. He believed most plots could be broken down into three categories: Two people fall in love. A stranger comes to town. And one or more people get stuck in something – an elevator, a bathtub, a city or a bad situation with no easy way out. “American Dirt” by Jeanine Cummins falls into this third category which Garry called a “stuck-in-a.” Acapulco book-store owner Lydia and her 11-year-old son Luca, suddenly find themselves the only survivors of a family massacre, which includes Lydia’s husband, a local journalist reporting on the local drug cartel. Seconds after the knowledge sets in that all of their relatives have died during a family celebration, Lydia and Luca are faced with only one choice: to run. Thus, begins their odyssey as they attempt to migrate from Mexico to the United States on top of trains traveling north. The secret that Lydia carries along the way is that the leader of the drug cartel, Javier, was also a loyal customer at her bookstore, and a close confidant. I found this story fascinating and a suspenseful read from beginning to end. This book is, however, not without controversy. You can pause and Google it now. While a work of fiction, Cummins has been criticized for writing about the Mexican immigrant experience when she identifies as a American white woman. I will let readers form their own opinions about who can and cannot write fiction, but this book never pretends to be a memoir. It is a powerful, relevant, compelling page-turner of a story that explores what happens when a mother and her child must fight to survive and forge new lives for themselves. To purchase this book on Amazon click here.