American Dirt (Oprah's Book Club): A Novel

American Dirt received a great deal of pre-publication praise and scorn. The scorn was mostly due to the fact that a white woman had spent 5 years researching and writing a story about Mexican immigrants. Alas, it is not a memoir, it is a work of fiction. There may be some faults in the details. However, the emphasis is on the challenges and the humanity of the characters involved not the details of Mexican culture. Having it told by somebody that has not experienced it personally could be a benefit. The goal is to bridge the gap to portray the illegal immigrants as people rather than mindless hoards.

American Dirt centers on Lydia (mom) and Lucha's (young boy) voyage to the United States. They come from a middle class family in Acapulco, she runs a bookstore, while her husband is a journalist. Their entire family is murdered by a drug lord. (We later learn that a newspaper article about him caused his beloved daughter to commit suicide.) They want to get as far away from Acapulco as possible. Alas, Lucha doesn't have a photo ID, so they are not able to buy an airplane ticket. They are afraid to drive or take a bus (because they might be found by the crime boss), so they opt to join the migrant route. They jump trains with other (mostly Central American) migrants. They learn about the challenges that led the others to escape their homeland. In the process they have a number of scary encounters and close calls, but manage to make it through, eventually being guided by a coyote across the Arizona desert to finally make it to reach a relative in the US. It is hard to read the book and not have sympathy for everything that these migrants have had to go through.