An 8-year-old boy named Luca is standing before the toilet in his grandmother's house in Acapulco when a bullet - one of what sounds like hundreds - flies through the open window. Of all the "What if?" novels I've read in recent years - many of them dystopian - 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.Īmerican Dirt opens with the sudden violent intrusion of the unthinkable into the mundane. Such a disparate line-up of blurbs signals what an unusual creature American Dirt is: It's a literary novel, to be sure, with nuanced character development and arresting language yet, its narrative hurtles forward with the intensity of a suspense tale.Īmerican Dirt's most profound achievement, though, is something I never could've been told about nor anticipated. The novel's circle of admirers has since swelled to include the likes of Stephen King, Sandra Cisneros, John Grisham and Julia Alvarez. It was over a year ago that I began to hear off-the-charts recommendations from trusted booksellers about a novel called American Dirt, by Jeanine Cummins. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title American Dirt Author Jeanine Cummins
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