David Lida is the author of four books, including the very
well received travel narrative First Stop in the New World
(Riverhead, 2009). One Life is his first novel and will be
published in Mexico in Spanish in 2016. He has been a journalist
for more than twenty years, principally in the U.S. and Mexico, but
also for magazines in England, Canada and Peru. He is based in
Mexico City. When he is not writing, he works as an investigator
for lawyers in the U.S. who defend Latin Americans that are facing
the death penalty.
The story succeeds as a dramatic tale of sex, drugs, alcohol, and
violence, a thorough indictment of the U.S. and Mexican criminal
justice systems, and a moody rumination on why we care about the
lives of others. --Publishers Weekly
Lida, himself a mitigation specialist and writer with deep ties
to Mexico (where he lives), pours personal emotion into his story.
In the process, he brings an elusive sense of dignity to a world
where it is seemingly lost. --Kirkus Reviews "One
Life will be deservedly praised for the light it trains on a
previously unexposed dark corner of the primitively cruel and
racist U.S. justice system. But David Lida also writes, in his
remarkable novel, about a Mexico that even very few Mexican writers
have any first-hand knowledge of, and does it in a way that readers
on both sides of the border have rarely encountered." --Francisco
Goldman, author of Say Her Name and The Interior Circuit:
A Mexico City Chronicle As I followed Richard, the unraveling
narrator of David Lida's One Life, I kept seeing, peeking
around the corner, the whiskey priest from Graham Greene's The
Power and the Glory. They both minister to a population so
forsaken it has lost faith in mercy. For the Mexicans of Lida's
novel, there are only labor and fate, the former measured by
dollars, the latter doled out by the country that issues them.
Which only makes Lida's achievement more remarkable: To follow
Richard is to relinquish Anglo time, Anglo logic, Anglo law -- to
say nothing about the assumptions that obtain about here and 'down
there.' This is a bracing, harrowing, and, finally, poignant,
novel, in which Lida succeeds in the writer's noblest task: To
render foreign lives so true that it becomes impossible to look
away. Buy a copy for Donald Trump. --Boris Fishman, author of A
Replacement Life David Lida's One Life is simply
revelatory. It's Juan Rulfo meets Raymond Chandler, Roberto Bolano
meets Chester Himes. It's the American justice system, exposed, and
the inside story of the frenetic, cruel push and pull that lures
Mexican migrants from of their homes to the US. I've never read a
book quite like this, and neither have you. --Daniel Alarcon,
author of At Night We Walk in Circles David Lida's newest
novel, One Life, is exactly the dark-humored piece of
literature everyone should be indulging in right now... One
Life explores a hard truth: this country wasn't built for
people of color, but we've survived and thrived in spite of it.
--Daniel Pena, Ploughshares David Lida's One Life is
full of suspense and beautifully described moments that often
conjure Juan Rulfo's Pedro Paramo. Like his courageous
protagonist Richard, who often journeys to the most dismal and
violent places in rural Mexico in search of an elusive history,
Lida fearlessly explores the stark places that often shape the
human spirit.
--Maria Venegas, author of Bulletproof Vest I haven't read a
book this harrowing since Atticus Lish's Preparations for the
Next Life. David Lida has written an extraordinary account of
the cruelty, squalor, and occasional enchantment of life on both
sides of the U.S.-Mexican border. It is an indictment of a justice
system mired in cynicism and bad faith, and an economic system that
hits the poorest hardest, and repays ambition with betrayal; but at
the same time, One Life is an incredible love story, not
just in the romantic sense, but in the sense that it's about coming
to love life itself, despite everything.--Paul LaFarge, author of
Another Life David Lida's daring novel One Life will
take you on a journey to darkest Mexico, where daily life is rich
with irony and pathos, violence and humor, destitution and the
homeliest of comforts. Richard, your travel guide, is on a mythic
quest; he must descend to the underworld and come out with a story
that will move the stone hearts of a Louisiana jury to mercy. His
goal is to save the life of a condemned woman whose name,
Esperanza, means hope. One life, his for hers. Gripping,
suspenseful, worldly, and wise, this thought-provoking novel never
lets up and the serious moral questions it raises resound long
after the final page is turned. --Valerie Martin, author of The
Ghost of the Mary Celeste The drama of dehumanization in both
countries is exposed... a durable novel that documents and
crystallizes an entire era: that of the underlying myth of two
indivisible and friendly nations... what remains is gratitude
before a great novel. --Sergio Gonzalez Rodriguez,
Reforma
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