https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/15/american-dirt-by-jeanine-cummins-review

This gripping story of a mother and son on Mexico’s migrant trail combines humane intentions with propulsive, action-movie execution

Lydia Quixano Pérez owns a bookshop in downtown Acapulco, where she is teetering on the edge of an emotional affair with her favourite customer, the alluringly well-read Javier. Lydia’s husband, Sebastián, is an investigative journalist, working to unmask “The Owl”, the leader of an inventively gruesome new narcotics cartel whose grab for power has left the city ravaged and fearful. There are few places on the planet more deadly to be a journalist, and the integrity that attracted Lydia to Sebastián terrifies her now that they have a child – it seems “sanctimonious, selfish”. When Sebastián publishes his exposé, Lydia’s darkest fears come to pass.

Jeanine Cummins’s immoderately hyped third novel, American Dirt, opens with blood-sodden terror as The Owl takes revenge: a machine-gun slaughter at a family barbecue. “There are 16 bodies in the backyard, almost everyone Lydia loved in the world.” Only Lydia and her eight-year-old son, Luca, have survived, but there will be no justice, no protection: the police “do nothing, because that’s precisely what the cartel pays them to do”. A distant cousin in Colorado offers the only hope of escape from the cartel’s reach, so Lydia and Luca head for el norte with a threadbare plan to reach the border by freight train (the infamous La Bestia), and then bribe a people smuggler to help them cross the desert to US soil. But The Owl has eyes everywhere.