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American Dirt (Oprah's Book Club): A Novel Kindle Edition
Jeanine Cummins's American Dirt, the #1 New York Times bestseller and Oprah Book Club pick that has sold over three million copies
Lydia lives in Acapulco. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while cracks are beginning to show in Acapulco because of the cartels, Lydia’s life is, by and large, fairly comfortable. But after her husband’s tell-all profile of the newest drug lord is published, none of their lives will ever be the same.
Forced to flee, Lydia and Luca find themselves joining the countless people trying to reach the United States. Lydia soon sees that everyone is running from something. But what exactly are they running to?
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherFlatiron Books
- Publication dateJanuary 21, 2020
- File size7152 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Review
#1 New York Times Bestseller
OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK
#1 Indie Next Pick
Library Reads Pick
“I devoured the novel in a dry-eyed adrenaline rush.... A profoundly moving reading experience.”
―The Washington Post
“The story is masterfully composed of timeless elements: the nightmare logic of grief, the value of human kindness, the power of love to drive us to do the unimaginable…Cummins proves that fiction can be a vehicle for expanding our empathy.”
―Time
“American Dirt just gutted me, and I didn’t just read this book―I inhabited it.... Everything about this book was so extraordinary. It’s suspenseful, the language is beautiful, and the story really opened my heart. I highly recommend it, and you will not want to put it down. It is just a magnificent novel.”
―Oprah Winfrey
“This novel is a heart-stopping story of survival, danger, and love…”
―The New York Times
“Heartfelt and hopeful, American Dirt is a novel for our times. Thrilling, epic, and unforgettable...”
―Esquire
“This tense, illuminating novel takes off like a rocket...”
―People (Book of the Week)
“American Dirt is a literary novel with nuanced character development and arresting language; yet, its narrative hurtles forward with the intensity of a suspense tale. Its most profound achievement, though, is something I never could’ve been told…American Dirt is the novel that, for me, nails what it’s like to live in this age of anxiety, where it feels like anything can happen, at any moment.”
―NPR’s Fresh Air
“Propulsive.”
―Elle
“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.... 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.”
―Stephen King
“American Dirt is both a moral compass and a riveting read. I couldn’t put it down. I’ll never stop thinking about it.”
―Ann Patchett, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Dutch House and Commonwealth
“A heart-pounding, page-turning, can’t-put-it-down, stay-up-till-3 a.m., adrenaline-pumping story…that examines, with sensitivity, care, and complexity of thought, immense, soul-obliterating trauma and its aftermath.”
―Los Angeles Times
“This is the international story of our times. Masterful.”
―Sandra Cisneros
“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.”
―Kristin Hannah, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nightingale, The Great Alone, and The Four Winds
“Destined to be a classic.”
―Woman’s Day
“Stunning…remarkable.... A novel as of the zeitgeist as any, American Dirt is also an account of love on the run that will never lose steam.”
―Vogue
“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.”
―John Grisham
“This one will tug at your heartstrings.”
―Marie Claire
“Pulse-pounding.”
―Chicago Tribune
"As literature, American Dirt is modern realism at its finest: a tale of moral challenge in the spirit of Theodore Dreiser wrapped inside a big-hearted social epic like The Grapes of Wrath.”
―New York Journal of Books
“This is a book that’s both hard to read and hard to put down and will no doubt spark a lot of conversation.”
―Real Simple
“This extraordinary novel about unbreakable determination will move the reader to the core.”
―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Lydia and Luca are utterly believable characters, and their breathtaking journey moves with the velocity and power of one of those freight trains. Intensely suspenseful and deeply humane, this novel makes migrants seeking to cross the southern U.S. border indelibly individual.”
―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Beautiful, straightforward language drives home the point that migration to safer places is not a political issue but a human one.”
―Booklist (starred review)
“The most gripping thriller you’ll read this side of Marathon Man. This thing goes harder than a Lee Child novel and the writing sings. Deserves to be a Gone Girl-level hit.”
―Joe Hill, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Fireman and Heart-Shaped Box
“This is a book everyone should read.”
―Woman & Home
“This powerful new novel promises readers a ride they’ll never forget.”
―She Reads
“Both timely and prodigiously readable...An important book.”
―Library Journal (starred review)
“A testimony of courage.”
―Parade
“Riveting, timely, a dazzling accomplishment.”
―Julia Alvarez, author of In the Time of the Butterflies, How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, Saving the World, A Wedding in Haiti, and Afterlife
“At once intimate and epic, American Dirt is an exhilarating and beautiful book about parental love and human hope.”
―Rumaan Alam, author of the New York Times bestseller Leave the World Behind
About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : B07QQLCZY1
- Publisher : Flatiron Books (January 21, 2020)
- Publication date : January 21, 2020
- Language : English
- File size : 7152 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 389 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,664 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #16 in Women's Literary Fiction
- #49 in Family Life Fiction (Books)
- #56 in Contemporary Women's Fiction
- Customer Reviews:
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Leanne Treese's Book Time Vlog: "American Dirt"
Leanne
About the author
Jeanine Cummins is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling novel, AMERICAN DIRT, which was an Oprah Book Club and a Barnes & Noble Book Club selection, has been translated into 34 languages, and has sold more than 2 million copies worldwide. She is also the author of the novels THE OUTSIDE BOY and THE CROOKED BRANCH, and the true crime memoir, A RIP IN HEAVEN. She lives in New York with her husband and two children.
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American Dirt has been pilloried by some in the media who think that the author did not have the qualifications to write it, i.e., she is not Mexican, not a migrant, and did not live the experience herself. This is extremely wrong-headed. Ms. Cummins has done a great service for Mexican, Central American and South American migrants by popularizing their tragic experiences, much as John Steinbeck did for American tenant farmers during the dust bowl in Grapes of Wrath, and Herman Wouk for victims of the Holocaust in Winds of War. One does not have to be a member of an ethnic group to empathize with its members or accurately recount their experiences-basic humanity and a talent for writing and research is all that’s required. The book has also been criticized for fictionalizing a great tragedy of our times, but the novelist Ayn Rand knew that popular fiction is often a much more effective means of promoting social change than mere journalism is. The author has been accused of stereotyping Mexicans, but all I found here were well-drawn, complex characters. I verified her research continuously as I read the book, and I found no inaccuracies, from the destruction of the beautiful city of Acapulco by the cartels, the pestilence of gangs and warlords haunting the Mexican highways, or the horrors of riding La Bestia, the freight trains that carry the migrants on top of them, between borders. I was particularly heartened by Cummins’ descriptions of the services provided for migrants by ordinary Mexicans, who donate food, water, shelter and support to them in sympathy with their plight. Of course, some may say that my opinion is invalid, because I am not Mexican. But I say kudos to Ms. Cummis for her bravery, which is already resulting in unjust repudiation.
No book is perfect, including this one. The story did lag in places due to over-description. And perhaps Ms Cummins should have chosen a more plebian tragedy that caused her protagonist to be uprooted, although the murder of journalists, law enforcement and government official by cartels is rampant in Mexico. But these are minor quibbles about a very great and important book.
So many of us live lives gifted to us from our ancestors, their struggles watered down for our consumption. We can never really know the fear, the hunger, the sheer determination that made them leave the counties of their births to make new lives somewhere frightening and new. Those ancestors may not all have left for reasons as grisly or bloody as Lydia’s or Soledad’s, but the roads have all been paved the same way: with grit, with pride, and with vision for a future so bright as to light the way ahead with its hope.
Those of us who were born here have no true understanding of this struggle, and that is the gift from those who come before. We may grow up hungry or poor, but we do not fear for our very lives or pay for our freedoms in ways no human should experience.
Like so many great books, American Dirt is so much bigger than the words that make it up. The story of Lydia and Luca is frightening and sad and horrifying and you cannot help but root for their very survival even as you wonder how many other undocumented immigrants from so many other countries undergo journeys like this one - or even ones that are unimaginably worse. This book invokes such a soul-deep connection that you want to know that its characters have healed and gone on to succeed and grow and and love. It makes you wonder how many people around you are living this life or something like it. This story is so incredibly vivid it invokes compassion and empathy that make you want to ask everyone about their story so that you can celebrate it with them.
America continues to be built on the backs of the last people off the boat or across the border, but as a country we continue to treat those immigrants - documented and undocumented both - as though their very lives are somehow devalued in comparison to those of us who were born here. Our government and our citizens continue to perpetuate a system where immigrant labor is undervalued and their safety is not guaranteed. American Dirt brings the struggle of two families to light, but it is up to us as citizens to demand government reforms and impact societal change to address these issues in our country. We cannot continue to embrace our apathy for such a large group of citizens who silently and impotently struggle in our midst even while we rely so heavily on their very existence in our economy and our lives.
Read American Dirt. It might change your life.