When Lydia Perez takes her son, Luca, to the bathroom during her niece Yenifer’s fifteenth birthday celebrations, they avoid a murderous bloodbath that kills the other sixteen extended family members present. The hit, in Acapulco, is the work of the Los Jardineros cartel, ordered by its leader, Javier Crespo Fuentes, in revenge for a press exposé penned by Sebastien Delgardo, Lydia’s husband, Luca’s papi.
It is a shock, but not a surprise, for Lydia who knows what she must do is flee before they too are mopped up. Easier said than done in Mexico when there is a price on your head and the country is controlled by the cartels that have the police in their pockets and operate with impunity, imposing levies on businesses and tolls on the roads.
Lydia and Luca pack a bag, empty the bank account, and run. Safety means leaving the country and the only viable option is the United States. If that means joining the stream of migrants heading to ‘El Norte’, so be it. The best way to travel, they learn, is on top of freight trains, but getting aboard is perilous. As is dodging the cartels, vigilantes, and corrupt border guards who pray on the desperate, keen to extort every last dollar, peso, and sexual favour. Even if they get to the border, a successful crossing requires the expensive services of a ‘coyote’ to find a path through the desert.
Much of the narrative is told in the present tense, giving it immediacy and a heightened sense of peril. Some relief is provided by morsels of the back stories of Lydia and her fellow travellers, though they are no less harrowing for being survived. Lydia’s transformation from middle class bookstore owner to ragged, moneyless refugee is swift and entirely believable. The trials endured by the migrants are both heart stopping and heart wrenching.
Emotional investment
in Lydia and Luca is total. Some books cannot be put down; at times this was
one I was reluctant to pick up, such was my fear for their wellbeing.
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