‘She’s wondered with the sort of detached fascination of the comfortable elite how dire the conditions of their lives must be wherever they come from, that this is the better option. That these people would leave their homes, their cultures, their families, even their languages, and venture into tremendous peril, risking their very lives, all for the chance to get to the dream of some faraway country that doesn’t even want them.’

-Jeanine Cummins, American Dirt

For the moment, I’m a conscientious objector in the conflicts going on over this novel (I’m midway through reading it now) but it should be said that any novel animated by the above sentiments is, in this time of wall-building and amped-up xenophobia, contributing something critically important to the English-reading American public.