![]() ![]() Unlike her bitter mother, who is erratic and has been wrecked by drink and loneliness, Ladydi is young and clear-eyed. “No community can survive so many tragedies.” And yet, the heart of this book, its very marrow, is how the remaining women survive, how they keep going even as the prospect of more devastation unspools before them. “My mother said the drug traffickers finally destroyed our mountain,” Ladydi tells the reader. Only women remain in this windswept, barren community near the port of Acapulco, leaving bad men to routinely descend on the village in trains of SUVs to enslave the prettiest girls in their cartel harems. It is a rural community that has been ravaged by drug traffickers and male flight to the United States. ![]() The mountainside Ladydi calls home is in Guerrero, Mexico, and is overrun with snakes and scorpions and bad news. The novel follows Ladydi as she transitions from schoolgirl to housekeeper and eventually to inmate, where she finds herself mistakenly numbered among the very women the drug war has claimed.Īll around Ladydi the makings of a comfortable and stable life lie in ruin her mother lives but is lost among the rubble. ![]() It is one of the best, most affecting novels I have read in years.Ĭlement has conjured a knowing voice for her strong young protagonist, Ladydi Garcia Martinez, a girl whose hard-won wisdom has come at a steep price. Jennifer Clement’s honest, beautifully written Prayers for the Stolen is a harrowing story about Mexico’s forgotten women and children: the ones missing and those in hiding. ![]()
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