| Myriam Gurba |
When I tell gringos that my Mexican grandfather worked as a publicist, the news silences them.
Shocked facial expressions follow suit.
Their heads look ready to explode and I can tell they’re thinking, “In Mexico, there are PUBLICISTS?!”
The boy is in the bathroom when the first bullet comes whistling through the window. His mother pushes him into the shower stall, curves her body around his. They hear gunfire in the backyard, where the rest of the family has been celebrating a child’s birthday party.
Sixteen people die that afternoon, murdered by the local drug cartel. The troubles for the survivors — Lydia and her son, Luca, who cower in the bathroom — are only just beginning.
“American Dirt,” a new novel by Jeanine Cummins, has been positioned as a breakout hit of the year. The story of a mother and son’s desperate attempt to flee Mexico for America, it arrives on a gust of rapturous and demented praise — anointed “The Grapes of Wrath” for our time, “required reading for all Americans.”
| Jeanine Cummins |
Allow me to take this one for the team. The motives of the book may be unimpeachable, but novels must be judged on execution, not intention. This peculiar book flounders and fails.