American Dirt (Cummins) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
This novel is a heart-stopping story of survival, danger, and love.
New York Times


I devoured the novel in a dry-eyed adrenaline rush…. A profoundly moving reading experience.
Washington Post


A heart-pounding, page-turning, can’t-put-it-down, stay-up-till-3 a.m., adrenaline-pumping story…that examines, with sensitivity, care, and complexity of thought, immense, soul-obliterating trauma and its aftermath.
Los Angeles Times


American Dirt just gutted me, and I didn’t just read this book―I inhabited it….Everything about this book was so extraordinary. It’s suspenseful, the language is beautiful, and the story really opened my heart. I highly recommend it, and you will not want to put it down. It is just a magnificent novel (Oprah Book Club Pick).
Oprah


American Dirt is a literary novel with nuanced character development and arresting language; yet, its narrative hurtles forward with the intensity of a suspense tale. Its most profound achievement, though, is something I never could’ve been told…. 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.
Maureen Corrigan - NPR


This tense, illuminating novel takes off like a rocket.
People


The story is masterfully composed of timeless elements: the nightmare logic of grief, the value of human kindness, the power of love to drive us to do the unimaginable…. Cummins proves that fiction can be a vehicle for expanding our empathy.
Time


Heartfelt and hopeful, American Dirt is a novel for our times. Thrilling, epic, and unforgettable.
Esquire


Stunning…remarkable…. A novel as of the zeitgeist as any, American Dirt is also an account of love on the run that will never lose steam.
Vogue


(Starred review) [Cummins's] devastating yet hopeful work...breathes life into the statistics of the thousands fleeing their homelands and seeking to cross the southern border of the United States.... This extraordinary novel about unbreakable determination will move the reader to the core.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review) In a book both timely and prodigiously readable, Cummins offers an unrelenting and terrifyingly you-are-there account of a Mexican mother and son fleeing to America after cartel violence takes their entire family.... An important book. —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal


(Starred review) American Dirt may be the don’t-miss book of 2020.
Booklist


(Starred review) This terrifying and tender novel is a blunt answer to the question of why immigrants from Latin America cross the U.S. border—and a testimony to the courage it takes to do it.... [Propulsive,] intensely suspenseful and deeply humane.
Kirkus Reviews