READING ROOM:
our summer reading guide
In the heart of every migrant is hope, it’s a dreamy driving force more powerful than those of us who live in comfortable “lucky” countries can ever comprehend. This book crystallises that emotion and imbues it with a compelling urgency that makes Jeanine Cummins’ brilliant American Dirt essential reading. The thriller intertwines the stories of men, women and children desperate enough to cling to the roof of La Bestia train network as it thunders through Mexico towards the promised land: el norte.
The tale centres on bookshop owner Lydia and her smart son Luca, eight, seemingly unlikely candidates for this perilous escapade but as we soon discover there is no “typical” in the world of illegal aliens. In the opening scene they are cowering in the bathroom shower stall while 16 members of their family are massacred in the back yard by Los Jardineros. Lydia’s husband Sebastián is among the dead, murdered with his barbecue spatula still in his hand. He’s a newspaper journalist and we later discover his profile story about La Lechuza, the cartel’s head honcho, has angered el jefe. If Lydia and Luca are to survive they must flee … immediately. Their tortuous journey involves a stream of horrors. And as they travel they meet others – including two troubled sisters – also risking their lives to get to the US and end up trekking with a “coyote” people smuggler across the desert.
“I’m acutely aware that the people coming to our southern border are not one faceless brown mass but singular individuals with stories and backgrounds and reasons for coming that are unique,” says Cummins, who was inspired to write the novel to give a human face to the US immigration policy. “When I saw our government was taking children away from their parents at the US border, I think my feelings about it can accurately be described as panic,” she says. “To me, the whole book takes place on American dirt. This dirt is as American as that dirt and some random, arbitrary line on a map shouldn’t decide whether a person lives or dies.”
Her breathtaking tale doesn’t shy away from the shocking reality of narco atrocities and it stays with you. “I believe that stories can absolutely shape our thinking. I’ve read books that have completely changed my understanding of certain elements of our culture, books that have blown open my mind. Of course, those are the kinds of books I hope to write.” This is one of those books.