American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins is a work of fiction first published in January 2020. Lydia, a bookstore owner in Acapulco, saves her 8-year-old son Luca from a massacre that wipes out 16 members of their family at the celebration of her niece’s 15th birthday cookout. The perpetrators are three sicarios, killers for Los Jardineros, a violent local cartel. Lydia and Luca spend the rest of the novel fleeing Mexico for the United States, on the run from Javier’s men, and encountering a diverse cast of migrants along the way.