Audio: Prayers for the stolen - Jennifer Clement

My thoughts:

At the back of the book there is an essay by the author telling how she spent 10 years doing research about the subject. I did know about how the Cartels kill and kidnap women, but I never knew to which extent. And it does make it more terrible, and it makes it into the kind of book you should listen to.

Ladydi grows up in a world of women. The men are either dead, or have left for the US. She lives in a world of scorpions, heat and the constant threat of being taken. If there is a pretty girl on a mountain someone will be told and they will be stolen. First she pretends she is a boy and when she gets older her mother makes her as ugly as she can. No one wants to steal an ugly girl. Rubbing chili on your face, painting your teeth black, cutting of your hair. Anything to be safe. And if that does not work you can always hide in a hole when they come for you. Women are stolen. Children are stolen.

And it is not like the girls and women are the only one in danger. Someone has to wait 8 years for an operation cos doctors dare not come. They will get kidnapped too and need an escort of soldiers. No teacher wants to live there either and they change every year. It is a dangerous land ruled by the narcos. And the cops are just as bad.

The government is no better. They want to ruin the poppy plantations and the pilots are scared of going to close so they just dump poison nearby, on civilians. 

Now why do they not just leave? Right, to where? They still love this land ruled by corruption and the cartels. 

This is then her story as she grows up and well I will not spoil it. It's not an easy life  and I am both fascinated and horrified. I feel sorry for all women.

But still it is not a bleak book. The main character brings life and love to the story.

Conclusion:

It is one of those books that should be read,  and/or discussed

Narrator Justine Eyre

I do like her and she does  a great job. She has a compassionate voice.

Blurb:

Ladydi Garcia Martínez is fierce, funny and smart. She was born into a world where being a girl is a dangerous thing. In the mountains of Guerrero, Mexico, women must fend for themselves, as their men have left to seek opportunities elsewhere. Here in the shadow of the drug war, bodies turn up on the outskirts of the village to be taken back to the earth by scorpions and snakes. School is held sporadically, when a volunteer can be coerced away from the big city for a semester. In Guerrero the drug lords are kings, and mothers disguise their daughters as sons, or when that fails they "make them ugly"—cropping their hair, blackening their teeth—anything to protect them from the rapacious grasp of the cartels. And when the black SUVs roll through town, Ladydi and her friends burrow into holes in their backyards like animals, tucked safely out of sight.

While her mother waits in vain for her husband’s return, Ladydi and her friends dream of a future that holds more promise than mere survival, finding humor, solidarity and fun in the face of so much tragedy. When Ladydi is offered work as a nanny for a wealthy family in Acapulco, she seizes the chance, and finds her first taste of love with a young caretaker there. 

Audio CD, 6 pages
Published July 10th 2018 by Tantor Audio (first published 2014)
Fiction
For review