Joanne Birtch

Minor spoiler alert! I am not a particularly fast reader but finished American Dirt in a couple of days while on vacation. I was rivetted. I have only one "negative" comment: Simmons choses to describe the girls as beyond beautiful. I suggest that the agents that tortured them were less interested in their beauty than their innocence and vulnerability. As a woman, I found their exposure to such elements as these to be particularly terrifying. I think Simmons did an excellent job in presenting the vulnerability of both the women and the children trying to escape their intolerable situations. I applaud her courage and intensity in writing a story that needed to be told.