Summary and Reviews of American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins

Media Reviews

New York Times The book’s simple language immerses the reader immediately and breathlessly in the terror and difficulty of Lydia and Luca’s flight. The uncomplicated moral universe allows us to read it as a thriller with real-life stakes. The novel’s polemical architecture gives a single very forceful and efficient drive to the narrative. And the greatest animating spirit of the novel is the love between Lydia and Luca: It shines its blazing light on all the desperate migrants and feels true and lived.

Washington Post American Dirt offers both a vital chronicle of contemporary Latin American migrant experience and a profoundly moving reading experience. If only we could press it into the hands of people in power. If only a story this generously told would inspire them to expand the borders of their vision of America.

David J. Schmidt, Huffington Post Anyone who has been to Mexico will find the landscape of "American Dirt" quite alien. And yet, certain scenes have a strange ring of authenticity ― which readers of two Latino authors, in particular, will find familiar.

The protagonists' train trip is strikingly similar to one in "Enrique's Journey." Cummins' descriptions of a garbage dump in Tijuana and the border itself, as well as the trash truck scene, bear resemblance to passages in Urrea's "By the Lake of Sleeping Children" as well as "Across the Wire."

John Warner, Chicago Tribune Cummins is not being criticized because she is a non-Mexican person writing about the Mexican experience. She is being criticized because she is a non-Mexican person writing about the Mexican experience poorly.

Parul Sehgal, New York Times The motives of the book may be unimpeachable, but novels must be judged on execution, not intention. This peculiar book flounders and fails...But does the book's shallowness paradoxically explain the excitement surrounding it? The tortured sentences aside, American Dirt is enviably easy to read. It is determinedly apolitical. The deep roots of these forced migrations are never interrogated; the American reader can read without fear of uncomfortable self-reproach. It asks only for us to accept that "these people are people," while giving us the saintly to root for and the barbarous to deplore — and then congratulating us for caring.

Myriam Gurba, Tropics of Meta In order to choke down Dirt, I developed a survival strategy. It required that I give myself over to the project of zealously hate-reading the book, filling its margins with phrases like "Pendeja, please." That's a Spanglish analogue for "Bitch, please."

Back in Alta California, I sat at my kitchen table and penned my review. I submitted it. Waited.

After a few days, an editor responded. She wrote that though my takedown of Dirt was "spectacular," I lacked the fame to pen something so "negative." She offered to reconsider if I changed my wording, if I wrote "something redeeming."

The Observer (Sunday edition of The Guardian) What Cummins does so skilfully in the novel is to subvert popular preconceptions about migrants. Lydia is educated, middle-class, escaping to America not in search of better economic opportunities but simply to survive. “She and Luca are actual migrants… All her life she’s pitied those poor people. She’s donated money. She’s wondered with the sort of detached fascination of the comfortable elite, how dire the conditions of their lives must be wherever they came from, that this is the better option.”

Cummins answers this question so compellingly that it is hard to imagine there will be a more urgent or politically relevant novel this year.

Slate, Leon Krauze [T]he real problem here [is] the decision to package and sell American Dirt not as candy, but as fiction that should be interpreted as emblematic. Flatiron Books, the otherwise remarkable writers who offered blurbs, and those who have promoted the book as if Cummins truly were the reincarnation of John Steinbeck have all insisted American Dirt is a transformational work of art, aimed to inspire a deeper debate about violence, immigration, and American nativism. That cannot happen with characters whom immigrants themselves could never relate to. The Great American Novel and the great novel of the Americas about violence, loss, and immigration is still waiting to be written.

Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Intensely suspenseful and deeply humane, this novel makes migrants seeking to cross the southern U.S. border indelibly individual.

Publishers Weekly (starred review) This extraordinary novel about unbreakable determination will move the reader to the core.

 Don Winslow, author of the New York Times bestseller The Border From its heart-stopping first sentence to its heart-shattering last, Cummins's story of immigrants is just what we need now. Gritty yet sensitive, realistic yet hopeful, grand and granular, American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins is a Grapes of Wrath for our times.

 John Grisham I strive to write page-turners because I love to read them, and it's been a long time since I turned pages as fast as I did with American Dirt. Its plot is tight, smart, and unpredictable. Its message is important and timely, but not political. Its characters are violent, compassionate, sadistic, fragile, and heroic. It is rich in authenticity. Its journey is a testament to the power of fear and hope and belief that there are more good people than bad.

 Julia Alvarez, author of In the Time of the Butterflies Riveting, timely, a dazzling accomplishment. Jeanine Cummins makes us all LIVE and BREATHE the refugee story. If a book can change hearts and transform policies, this is the one!

 Kristin Hannah, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Great Alone Relevant, powerful, extraordinary. It is a remarkable combination of joy and terror, infused always with the restorative power of a mother's love and the endless human capacity for hope. I hope everyone reads it and is as moved by it as I was.

 Rumaan Alam, author of That Kind of Mother and Rich and Pretty The story of the migrant is the story of our times, and Jeanine Cummins is a worthy chronicler. At once intimate and epic, American Dirt is an exhilarating and beautiful book about parental love and human hope.

 Sarah Blake, author of the New York Times bestsellers The Postmistress and The Guest Book Urgent and unforgettable, American Dirt leaps the borders of the page and demands attention, especially now.

 Stephen King American Dirt is an extraordinary piece of work, a perfect balancing act with terror on one side and love on the other. I defy anyone to read the first seven pages of this book and not finish it. The prose is immaculate, and the story never lets up. This book will be an important voice in the discussion about immigration and los migrantes; it certainly puts the lie to the idea that we are being besieged by 'bad hombres.' On a micro scale--the story scale, where I like to live--it's one hell of a novel about a good woman on the run with her beautiful boy. It's marvelous.

 Tara Conklin, author of the New York Times bestseller The Last Romantics American Dirt is an urgent, blistering, unforgettable book. In her portrayal of Lydia and Luca, a mother and son forced to leave their Mexican home, Jeanine Cummins has given face to migrants everywhere who flee violence and near-certain death in search of only one thing: a chance at life. Beautifully written, thrilling in its propulsive force, American Dirt is a new American classic.

 Tracy Chevalier, bestselling author of Girl With a Pearl Earring This tough, powerful novel is an eye opener. It made me understand better why someone would give up the home they know and love to survive, and the grit required to cross that border. It is essential reading for our time.

Reader Reviews

Cathryn Conroy
A Suspenseful and Terrifying Thriller That Doubles as Current Events
This is a quick-to-read, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants thriller by Jeanine Cummins that tracks in often gruesome detail the path of a mother and son as they migrate from Mexico to the United States to escape a brutal drug cartel that wants them both ...   Read More BarbT
American Dirt
It’s been awhile since I read this book but what still stands out to me is this book brings the understanding of of the horrific circumstances immigrants from Central America are escaping. While we understand the immigration problem in our country, ...   Read More Mo
American Dirt
Best book I have read in a long while. Gripping. Highlights the plight of migrants having to flee violence and poverty or both and reinforces how resourceful and courageous they have to be to undertake long journeys to try to reach safety. Page Larkin
Loved it and Read it twice
A pal suggested this book… on a whim I picked it up. I was intrigued from page one! Fabulous characters, storyline, and development. Listened to the book on the Libby app, too. As a result of my enthusiasm, My book club also read/loved the book.

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