It’s a Mystery: “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go”
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American Dirt
By Jeanine Cummins
Flatiron Books, 2020
“One of the very first bullets comes in through the open window above the toilet where Luca is standing.” It’s the heart-stopping opening of this powerful novel of endurance against all odds. Luca is the eight-year-old son of Lydia Quixano Perez and they are the sole survivors of a shooting massacre of 16, their entire family. Everyone was attending the quinceañera (birthday party for a 15-year-old) of Lydia’s niece. The gunmen were sicarios (assassins) of the Los Jardineros cartel in Acapulco. Among the dead is Lydia’s husband, Sebastián, who was a journalist whose fearless coverage of the cartel is the reason los sicarios were sent, as the sign fastened to his chest makes clear. The sign says: TODA MI FAMILIA ESTA MUERTA POR MI CULPA (My whole family is dead because of me).
Ironically, Lydia has befriended the jefe (the leader) of the cartel in the small bookstore that she runs. His name is Javier Crespo Fuentes and he was a courtly older man who became one of her favorite customers. He called Lydia “la reina de mi Alma” (the queen of my soul). Recently, he was also the subject of one of Sebastián’s most brutal profiles. Couple the profile with the sign and Lydia knows with a chilling certainty that when Crespo finds out her and her son are alive, he will kill them both.
They have to disappear. They have to get away from Acapulco, so far away that Javier Crespo Fuentes will never be able to find them.
Lydia and Luca flee north, their goal to reach the only refuge they have: her uncle’s family in Denver. Their northern odyssey begins with a bus journey of almost 1000 miles, joining other migrants trying to make it to the U.S. border. The men who guide them are known as “coyotes” and it has cost Lydia most of their life-savings for their services. North of Mexico City, the sole source of transportation is traveling atop a lethally dangerous freight train, La Bestia. It’s the only way to reach the border without being seen. And after that, it’s on foot across the merciless Sonoran Desert. Determination mixes with hope and despair in equal parts as they relentlessly push forward -- all the while in constant danger from la migra – the unseen, omnipresent Border Patrol.
The man in charge of them, the lead coyote, as it were, is called El Chacal or the Jackal. This nickname conjures up “Carlos the Jackal,” the infamous Venezuelan militant whose terrorist campaign spanned two decades. He orchestrated some of the highest-profile terrorist attacks of the 1970s and ‘80s. Legend has it that a British journalist gave him the nickname after a search of one of Carlos’s London safe houses turned up a copy of Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal. That was a memorable thriller about an assassination attempt on De Gaulle. Actually, the man known to Lydia and Luc as El Chacal has had the name since he was twelve and rescued a pup that grew to resemble the wild, wolf-like animal. Juan Pedro, as he was known back then, became known as “Mother of Jackal” which eventually got shortened to “El Chacal.” Early on, it was his instinctive survivalist skills and the ease with which he navigated the difficult terrain that quite accidentally thrust him into a thriving business in human smuggling.
After a truck ride from Nogales, Lydia and Luca and all the other migrants are half a mile’s walk from Los Estados Unidos.
El Chaco lines them up outside the trucks and tells them they need only be aware of the person in front and the person behind them. It’s too dark to see him, but his voice takes on such a warm animation it’s almost visible itself, a shot of color against the black of night. He’s all safety and faithful authority. He is perfectly contagious energy. With his guidance, they all believe this is possible. They don’t even know his real name, but they entrust him with their lives….
“I make that noise, it means you have to be absolutely still and silent until I say it’s time to move again. This is the signal that it’s time to move again.” He makes a double-clicking noise with his tongue that’s impressively audible.… The migrants stay in the positions El Chacal assigns for them…. They move north at a pace that’s rapid enough to be almost startling, and Lydia tries to watch Luca’s nearly invisible outline ahead…. Sometimes El Chacal makes the quick whistle, and they all stand absolutely still and silent until he gives the double-click command for them to continue.
Finally, as they look up, they see a blinking red light mounted high on a post:
It swivels. And when the blinking red eye looks away, El Chacal makes the double-click, and they move very quickly, almost at a run through the darkness, until they are up and over a small ridge, beyond the sweep of that swiveling, mechanical eye.
One of the men whispers loudly that they have outsmarted the U.S. Border Patrol-Camera! “Luca grins in the dark, but Lydia feels a lurch in her stomach, a passing grief at what that must mean.”
They are in the United States.
Lydia expected the crossing would be momentous…She expected to be able to pause, however briefly, so she might look back and reflect, both physically and metaphorically, at what she’s leaving behind…. But the moment of the crossing has already passed, and she didn’t even realize it had happened. She never looked back, never committed any small act of ceremony to help launch her into the new life on the other side. Nothing can be undone. Adelante.
Alas, this is not the end of their grueling journey. They are in danger at every turn but they are undeterred and poignantly united in their quest for a better life. Jeanine Cummins’ American Dirt is a beautifully written, powerful, indelibly real and deeply moving novel.
—Irma Heldman is a veteran publishing executive and book reviewer with a penchant for mysteries. One of her favorite gigs was her magazine column “On the Docket” under the pseudonym O. L. Bailey.