American Dirt

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapter 4

Chapters 5-7

Chapter 8

Chapters 9-12

Chapter 13

Chapters 14-18

Chapters 19-22

Chapters 23-25

Chapters 26-29

Chapter 30-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Book Club Questions

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1 Summary

The book opens with the massacre of a Mexican family during a quinceañera celebration in Acapulco. Sixteen people are killed at the house belonging to Lydia’s mother, including Lydia’s husband, Sebastián and her 15-year-old niece, Yénifer. The only survivors are Lydia and her son, Luca, who narrowly misses being hit by a bullet as he uses the toilet. Lydia tackles Luca. He falls and splits his lip.

The two hide behind a shower wall while gunfire rings out around them. They overhear three sicarios looking for a man and a child (Sebastián and Luca). One of the killers takes a picture of a dead boy thinking it is Luca, but it is his nine-year-old cousin, Adrián.

The three men search the house. Lydia notices a drop of Luca’s blood on the bathroom floor. She leans out to wipe it up with her shirt sleeve, narrowly avoiding being seen by one of the killers. The man urinates and helps himself to the barbecued chicken cooking on the grill. After a period of silence, Lydia ducks out, leaving Luca alone in the bathroom. He recalls how his mother and grandmother bickered before the massacre. The chapter ends with Lydia calling the police.

Chapter 2 Summary

Lydia returns to the bathroom to fetch Luca, who is curled up in a ball and rocking on the floor. She coaxes him out the front door to spare him from the gruesome scene in the backyard. Lydia shakes uncontrollably and Luca vomits while they sit side by side on the curb waiting for the police.

Officers surround the house with crime-scene tape and begin their investigation while a senior detective questions Lydia, who breaks down in tears. Luca comforts her. The medical examiner takes Luca to sit in her truck and gives him a drink while Lydia speaks to the detective. She tells him she did not see the faces of the three shooters and that Sebastián was the target. She expresses fear that the sicarios will come back to kill her and Luca. The detective silently notes that seven of the police officers and medical staff on the scene are on the cartel’s payroll. One informant has already contacted Los Jardineros to report Lydia and Luca’s survival.

Lydia decides to flee her mother’s house. The detective asks if she knows who is responsible for the massacre. She tells him it is her friend, Javier, the jefe of Los Jardineros. As she retrieves Sebastián’s car keys, she notices the message the killers left on his body: “My whole family is dead because of me” (11). She removes Sebastián’s wedding band, grabs 15,000 pesos from under her mother’s mattress, packs a bag, and walks away with Luca.

Chapter 3 Summary

Lydia inspects Sebastián’s car to ensure it has not been rigged before retrieving their belongings. She hands Luca Sebastián’s red Yankees cap, which he wears for the rest of the novel. Lydia takes Luca on and off buses in case they have a tail. She worries she is being watched by bus drivers, many of whom work as halcones, or lookouts, for the cartel.

She takes Luca to the bank to empty her account before going to Walmart to purchase necessities, including a backpack for Luca, clothing, flashlights, canteens, and a machete with a retractable blade. Lydia checks into a beach hotel under a fake name and pays for a room in cash.

Even in the safety of their room, Luca is unable to release the emotions he spent the day suppressing. He watches television while Lydia organizes their belongings. Lydia steps out on the balcony, her terror overshadowing her grief. In the meantime, the clerk sends a text to the cartel informing them of Lydia and Luca’s arrival.

Chapters 1-3 Analysis

Chapter 1 drops the reader in the middle of a massacre. The sounds of gunshots, breaking glass, and screaming convey the chaos and violence of the scene as Lydia and Luca hide from the three sicarios Javier sent to kill them. Cummins’s taut prose creates a sense of immediacy, while the characters’ reactions capture the terror of the experience: “Luca does not breathe. Mami does not breathe. Their eyes are closed, their bodies motionless, even their adrenaline is suspended within the calcified will of their stillness” (3). These physiological responses continue long after the killers leave. In Chapters 2 and 3, for instance, Lydia shakes involuntarily even though it is hot outside, while Luca vomits several times. Luca describes the massacre as a bad dream, foreshadowing the nightmare that awaits them as they travel north to the US.

Juxtaposition is a key component of Cummins’s writing. In Chapter 1, for example, she compares the position of Sebastián’s corpse to his most active moments, notably the times he plays with Luca, thereby connecting the stillness of the dead with the vitality of the living. In Chapter 3, Cummins compares Lydia and Luca’s unremarkable outward appearance to their interior turmoil, which is as evident as “a flashing neon sign” (20).

Lydia’s love of Luca is a theme that runs through the opening chapters (and through the rest of the book). She expresses her love primarily by protecting him, both physically and emotionally. Her first instinct when gunfire erupts is to tackle Luca to the ground and shove him behind a shower wall while shielding his body with hers. After the sicarios leave, Lydia leads Luca out of the house through the front door to spare him from seeing his murdered relatives. She also refuses to let Luca out of her sight during the police interview. Last, she kicks an aggressive dog away as they leave the scene of the crime.

A sense of pressing danger interconnects the three chapters. Immediately after the massacre, the neighbors draw their curtains closed to avoid becoming witnesses against the cartel. Soon after the police arrive, Lydia worries that some of the officers are being paid as spies for the cartel. Before retrieving her belongings from Sebastián’s car, she inspects the vehicle in search of a booby trap. Most of Chapter 3 describes Lydia and Luca getting on and off buses to avoid being tailed. The violence of the massacre causes Lydia to recall past traumas, like her father's death from cancer and her late-term miscarriage. For Luca and other children, danger is an inescapable part of life, even before the massacre: “These kids, rich, poor, middle-class, have all seen bodies in the streets. Casual murder” (3). Luca has always been aware that violence would touch him one day, but that did nothing to prepare him for its impact when it finally came.