![]() ![]() My cigarette burns are a message,” says Paula. “If we’re found dead someplace everyone will know we were stolen. Ladydi’s friend Paula, kidnapped, returns with tales of girls burning themselves with cigarettes to mark their corpses. ![]() Ladydi’s drunken mother contemplates knocking out her teeth, while Ladydi and her friends scramble to conceal themselves in holes in the ground as convoys rumble in. It’s a world where mothers bruise, maim or disguise their daughters to prevent them from being kidnapped and sold as human chattel. Her home is very much a woman’s world, made so because all the men have either fled to the United States to start new families, been kidnapped to work for the cartels or been murdered. But what happens to those poor souls left behind? That’s the premise behind this spare, almost noir novel by Mexico-based American poet Clement ( The Poison That Fascinates, 2008, etc.) that tells the story of 13-year-old Ladydi Garcia Martinez, who lives in a small village in southwestern Mexico. We hear all the time about the executions and decapitations of the bloody wars in Mexico, not to mention the endless contest over immigration reform as desperate men cross the United States border daily, running either to or from something. It wouldn’t be incorrect to call this a novel of collateral damage. A young girl struggles to survive under the desolate but terrifying umbrella of the Mexican drug wars. ![]()
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