Book: American Dirt *****

As I enter my 65^th year as a reader (I started young), I look back on hundreds of novels (most of them sci-fi and humor) and can’t think of one that was more moving and compelling than Jeanine Cummins' American Dirt, the story of a woman’s desperate attempt to reach the United States after she gets crosswise with a Mexican cartel. I was literally in tears by the time I read the epilogue. It is compelling, well-written and moving. I had difficulty putting it down. In a way, it reminds me of one of the earliest novels I read, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, about conditions in the meat-packing business (of which he famously said, “I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.”) Sinclair’s social problem novel resulted in regulation of the food business. Novels, by personalizing social problems, are, I suspect, more effective than treatises. Let’s hope that Mexican immigrants received better treatment from government and citizens alike as a result of this dramatic tale, just as Cummins intended.