Free Republic

Jeanine Cummins’ bestselling novel 'American Dirt' has elicited protests over the author's lack of Latinx credentials, but the bigger problem is that the book is plodding moralistic melodrama. In Jeanine Cummins’ novel American Dirt, main character Lydia Pérez is a middle class, college-educated bookstore owner in Acapulco. She has a nine-year-old son with her husband Sebastián who is an investigative reporter at the local newspaper. She is bored by her clientele, who mostly consist of tourists and buyers of knickknacks, until one day a man with huge soul and an exquisite taste that nearly matches her own enters her shop...

Imperative Entertainment, the production banner behind the Clint Eastwood hit The Mule, has acquired the rights to American Dirt, the Mexican migrant drama novel by Jeanine Cummins. Charles Leavitt, the scribe who penned the Leonardo DiCaprio drama Blood Diamond, has been tapped to write the adaptation, which will be produced by Imperative’s Dan Friedkin and Bradley Thomas. Mixing ripped-from-the-homepage headlines with thriller elements, the story centers on a Mexican mother and son who are the sole survivors after cartel drug traffickers kill her husband and family. The pair undertake an arduous journey to America and safety, fleeing the cartel while...