Mise à jour du 30/9/18: droits cédés à Philippe Rey

A novelist who can’t be ignored

AMERICAN DIRT
by Jeanine Cummins
Flatiron Books, Fall 2019/Early 2020

AMERICAN DIRT is the gripping story of Lydia Quixano Perez, a bookseller living a quiet but fulfilling life with her family in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She develops a deep bond with a sensitive, intelligent man who frequents her store, and cannot believe it when her journalist husband reveals the truth: her mysterious poetry-writing friend is the top leader of the drug cartel that rules their beloved city. The man goes by the name la Lechuza, the Owl, and he is unafraid of making gruesome and fatal spectacles of anyone who opposes him. When Lydia’s husband publishes a tell-all profile of the notorious leader, the Owl sends his gangsters to kill everyone they can find at a family gathering. Only Lydia and her eight-year-old son Luca survive, and they start running for their lives, imagining that it is only in the United Stated that they will be safe from the Owl’s deadly reach. This is just the first pages of the novel but the intensity of the story builds and builds from here. The mother and son discover that all they have already seen is just the beginning, and the road to el norte is more perilous than they could ever dream. A tale of grim survivorship in the face of astronomical odds, AMERICAN DIRT explores the innermost hearts of people who have sacrificed everything for a glimmer of hope—that there might be a future for what they hold most dear. Fans of The Unknown Americans, Prayers for the Stolen, The Tortilla Curtain, and Into the Beautiful North will appreciate this unflinching look at the reality of the migrant experience and the unique bonds forged in the struggle to keep love, faith, and family alive.

Jeanine Cummins is the author of three books. Her true crime book A RIP IN HEAVEN was published by NAL in 2004 and was a bestseller that continues to sell today. Her two novels, THE OUTSIDE BOY and THE CROOKED BRANCH, both set in Ireland, were published as paperback originals by NAL in 2010 and 2013 respectively. Jeanine is half Puerto-Rican and speaks fluent Spanish, which allowed her to do extensive research in Mexico, lending AMERICAN DIRT its hard-won and impressive authenticity.