American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins

 Lydia Perez and her 8-year-old son, Luca, have to flee Aculpulco when most of their family is gunned down by a cartel run by a man, Javier, that Lydia knew and liked before she found out he was a narco jefe. Now as his men try to track her and Luca down, Lydia must give up the life she has always known and use all her wits to keep them alive and moving toward el Norte. They pass through migrante camps and ride on the top of a freight train nicknamed La Bestia.  She meets other immigrants and learns of their tragic pasts.  All the time she is mourning the death of her husband, the betrayal of her friend, and worrying if there really will be a better life across the border.  

This is a powerful and intense novel. Cummings doesn't spare the reader any of the grim and grusome details of life under the cartels or as a migrante. She draws all of the characters with full shading.  The most evil has a patch of good and the most nobel has a bit of evil. Since this is not a children' novel, I wasn't sure whether they would make it, die in the desert, or arrive just to be deported or mistreated once they arrived. I wonder if that was the main point of the book.  As a reader who has become attached to the characters, you hope they make it and have a good life.  Anyone who was anti-immigration, after reading the book, would have to rethink their stance.  In all honesty it was a hard book to get though because it is so unflinching, but I am glad I stuck it out.  (2020, 386 p.)