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One Life
Richard, an American in Mexico, helps save the lives of the guilty. A mitigation specialist, hired by defense teams on capital cases in the U.S., he combs the back roads of starving-to-death Mexican shanty towns and agricultural villages. Divorced, a failed novelist with no family, and not too keen on attachments, he investigates the traumatic personal histories of undocumented Mexicans facing the death penalty in his home country.
Esperanza is a young woman from the destitute Mexican hamlet of Puroaire. Trying to escape a life of poverty and abuse, her journey leads her to the United States, where she works on a cleanup crew after Hurricane Katrina. Her harrowing adventure is like that of millions of undocumented workers in the U.S. — until she finds herself in a jail cell, accused of murdering her baby. When Richard visits Esperanza in jail, the boundaries of his closely circumscribed life explode.
Set in the American South and in rural Mexico, One Life examines the indelible links between life and death, sex and love. It’s at once a page-turning mystery and a profound examination of freedom and justice.
Esperanza is a young woman from the destitute Mexican hamlet of Puroaire. Trying to escape a life of poverty and abuse, her journey leads her to the United States, where she works on a cleanup crew after Hurricane Katrina. Her harrowing adventure is like that of millions of undocumented workers in the U.S. — until she finds herself in a jail cell, accused of murdering her baby. When Richard visits Esperanza in jail, the boundaries of his closely circumscribed life explode.
Set in the American South and in rural Mexico, One Life examines the indelible links between life and death, sex and love. It’s at once a page-turning mystery and a profound examination of freedom and justice.
301 pages, Paperback
Published October 11, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
January 23, 2017
Esperanza Morales is a Tess of the d’Urbervilles for our times. Like Thomas Hardy’s tragic heroine, she is a good and beautiful woman, constrained by humble origins, preyed upon by men, and – so it appears – driven by desperation to murder. As the story of this undocumented immigrant opens, she faces the death penalty in unforgiving Louisiana for killing her baby. In Esperanza’s life, to recall the lot of another Hardy heroine, happiness is but an occasional episode in a general drama of pain.
For all this, One Life is not a depressing novel but a strangely uplifting one. It’s largely told from the viewpoint of a droll mitigation specialist, an expatriate loner called Richard, who guides us through the miseries of Mexican poverty and the injustices of the U.S. legal system with fascinating insight and through the disappointments of his own life with self-deprecating humour. It’s a story about the good that an idealist can do – not always, but often – in a world in which the poor have few allies or advocates, at times even among their own. And it’s about the power of hope and faith against adversity. David Lida sews his transnational narrative together with authority and profound empathy.
Esperanza (like Hardy, Lida is fond of symbolic names and place names) hails from the godforsaken Tierra Caliente of Michoacán and following so many from that violent region finds little option but to migrate for work. First she tries the state capital, where as a maid in a wealthy home she’s subjected to the everyday classism that’s ingrained among Mexican elites. After being fired through little fault of her own, she tries the border and the monotony of a U.S. maquiladora; it’s more reliable work, but the city is Juárez, feminicide capital of the world. When her best friend disappears she is forced to leave the shack she rented with her. Crossing the border, she first finds a motel job in Texas, then work during the post-Katrina clean-up in New Orleans, where Mexicans and Hondurans are shouldering most of the heavy-lifting.
Perhaps it takes a certain rootlessness to fully understand the plight of the migrant. Certainly the Mexico City-based Richard is a well-matched narrator, and the more so for being the son of migrants himself: a Lithuanian-born mother and a Mississippian-turned-New Yorker father. Esperanza’s moves may be her own choices, but they are all made under heavy duress. As Lida well understands, the history of human migration since Ellis Island and long before is one of people trying to escape deprivation or suffering. And even then, each departure is wrenching.
Recent years have seen several Mexico-set novels written by foreigners who unlike their more famous literary forebears – Graham Greene, Malcolm Lowry, John Steinbeck, et al. – have been long-term residents, and the depth of their feeling for Mexicans really shows. Jennifer Clement (author of Prayers for the Stolen) is one; Lida is another. In fact their precursors are more the sociological classic The Children of Sánchez than The Power and the Glory or Under the Volcano. As a stylist, Lida is not in that league; though his prose is well-paced and lucid, his imagery at times repeats itself and his hyperbole at times feels stilted. But as a social realist he reveals a world of disadvantage with bracing authenticity and immediacy. He makes you care.
For all this, One Life is not a depressing novel but a strangely uplifting one. It’s largely told from the viewpoint of a droll mitigation specialist, an expatriate loner called Richard, who guides us through the miseries of Mexican poverty and the injustices of the U.S. legal system with fascinating insight and through the disappointments of his own life with self-deprecating humour. It’s a story about the good that an idealist can do – not always, but often – in a world in which the poor have few allies or advocates, at times even among their own. And it’s about the power of hope and faith against adversity. David Lida sews his transnational narrative together with authority and profound empathy.
Esperanza (like Hardy, Lida is fond of symbolic names and place names) hails from the godforsaken Tierra Caliente of Michoacán and following so many from that violent region finds little option but to migrate for work. First she tries the state capital, where as a maid in a wealthy home she’s subjected to the everyday classism that’s ingrained among Mexican elites. After being fired through little fault of her own, she tries the border and the monotony of a U.S. maquiladora; it’s more reliable work, but the city is Juárez, feminicide capital of the world. When her best friend disappears she is forced to leave the shack she rented with her. Crossing the border, she first finds a motel job in Texas, then work during the post-Katrina clean-up in New Orleans, where Mexicans and Hondurans are shouldering most of the heavy-lifting.
Perhaps it takes a certain rootlessness to fully understand the plight of the migrant. Certainly the Mexico City-based Richard is a well-matched narrator, and the more so for being the son of migrants himself: a Lithuanian-born mother and a Mississippian-turned-New Yorker father. Esperanza’s moves may be her own choices, but they are all made under heavy duress. As Lida well understands, the history of human migration since Ellis Island and long before is one of people trying to escape deprivation or suffering. And even then, each departure is wrenching.
Recent years have seen several Mexico-set novels written by foreigners who unlike their more famous literary forebears – Graham Greene, Malcolm Lowry, John Steinbeck, et al. – have been long-term residents, and the depth of their feeling for Mexicans really shows. Jennifer Clement (author of Prayers for the Stolen) is one; Lida is another. In fact their precursors are more the sociological classic The Children of Sánchez than The Power and the Glory or Under the Volcano. As a stylist, Lida is not in that league; though his prose is well-paced and lucid, his imagery at times repeats itself and his hyperbole at times feels stilted. But as a social realist he reveals a world of disadvantage with bracing authenticity and immediacy. He makes you care.
February 5, 2018
One unusual thing about this book is that it is often narrated by one of the characters, Richard, in the first person, even though he is dead (not a spoiler, it's on the first page). I think it would have been better not to know that he dies until the end. I guess in a book club we would discuss the author's choice in this regard. I guess it would have been odd for his to just die at the end...
Another strange thing is that the author of the book was once or continues to be a mitigation specialist, same as Richard. So to some extent (all extent) he is writing of his own experiences. Somehow it's weird to have the author be the main character but it's not an autobiography. It just felt strange sometimes.
Still, it's such a horrifying sad story, opening up a window onto circumstances that I'd only had a vague clue about. Esperanza is not necessarily likeable for all that she's had a really difficult life. And Richard loves her why. Because she's pretty? Because he wants to save her? We don't get much insight into what she would be like outside of her circumstances so it's hard to tell.
From the Amazon review, [adjusted by me]:
Richard, an American in Mexico, helps save the lives of the guilty [or possibly not guilty?]. A mitigation specialist, hired by defense teams on capital cases in the U.S., he combs the back roads of starving-to-death Mexican shanty towns and agricultural villages. Divorced, a failed novelist with no family, and not too keen on attachments, he investigates the traumatic personal histories of undocumented Mexicans facing the death penalty in his home country.
Esperanza is a young woman from the destitute Mexican hamlet of Puroaire. Trying to escape a life of poverty and abuse, her journey leads her to the United States, where she works on a cleanup crew after Hurricane Katrina. Her harrowing adventure is like that of millions of undocumented workers in the U.S. — until she finds herself in a jail cell, accused of murdering her baby. When Richard visits Esperanza in jail, the boundaries of his closely circumscribed life explode [well, no, he really is just doing his job, which he has done for others before her, but he falls for her looks so maybe he works a little harder for her? I hope that's not how he does his job!].
Set in the American South and in rural Mexico, One Life examines the indelible links between life and death, sex and love. It’s at once a page-turning mystery and a profound examination of freedom and justice.
Another strange thing is that the author of the book was once or continues to be a mitigation specialist, same as Richard. So to some extent (all extent) he is writing of his own experiences. Somehow it's weird to have the author be the main character but it's not an autobiography. It just felt strange sometimes.
Still, it's such a horrifying sad story, opening up a window onto circumstances that I'd only had a vague clue about. Esperanza is not necessarily likeable for all that she's had a really difficult life. And Richard loves her why. Because she's pretty? Because he wants to save her? We don't get much insight into what she would be like outside of her circumstances so it's hard to tell.
From the Amazon review, [adjusted by me]:
Richard, an American in Mexico, helps save the lives of the guilty [or possibly not guilty?]. A mitigation specialist, hired by defense teams on capital cases in the U.S., he combs the back roads of starving-to-death Mexican shanty towns and agricultural villages. Divorced, a failed novelist with no family, and not too keen on attachments, he investigates the traumatic personal histories of undocumented Mexicans facing the death penalty in his home country.
Esperanza is a young woman from the destitute Mexican hamlet of Puroaire. Trying to escape a life of poverty and abuse, her journey leads her to the United States, where she works on a cleanup crew after Hurricane Katrina. Her harrowing adventure is like that of millions of undocumented workers in the U.S. — until she finds herself in a jail cell, accused of murdering her baby. When Richard visits Esperanza in jail, the boundaries of his closely circumscribed life explode [well, no, he really is just doing his job, which he has done for others before her, but he falls for her looks so maybe he works a little harder for her? I hope that's not how he does his job!].
Set in the American South and in rural Mexico, One Life examines the indelible links between life and death, sex and love. It’s at once a page-turning mystery and a profound examination of freedom and justice.
April 18, 2025
This book is gripping, deeply unsettling, and ultimately moving. What an incredible book! It felt as if I were truly in the story. Your writing is so visual that it plays out like a movie, but it feels even more intimate because we’re given access to the storyteller's thoughts. I believe this book should be mandatory reading for every American, especially in today's world, where it seems many have lost their sense of humanity. If only they understood the challenges of surviving in extreme poverty from the moment you are born into it.
February 5, 2017
I can’t think of a more urgent recently published novel, one that needs to be read especially in our new age of Trump, than David Lida’s “One Life.” But please don’t get me wrong: published as a paperback original last fall, “One Life” is not some eat-your-vegetables polemic or dryly didactic tome. Rather, Lida’s novel is a deeply felt character driven tale, a semi-autobiographical novel that fatefully delves into the way in which two lives intertwine. Lida himself has been living in Mexico and is a “mitigation specialist,” as is Richard, his gringo protagonist and narrator, whose job is to gather background information on Mexican nationals whose crimes committed in the US could lead to a death penalty prosecution. So Richard must present a convincing narrative of mitigating circumstances in the life of his client that would help convince the prosecutor to not seek the death penalty. When Richard’s new case becomes that of Esperanza, a poor young Mexican woman who’s come to Louisiana to find work in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and is arrested and accused of murdering her infant daughter, Richard begins investigating her life in Mexico while making frequent visits to her in a parish jail. To say that Richard willfully gets in over his head is an understatement. The story is a dark one — we know what will become of Richard from the opening pages — but one that also espies the hope inherent in the act of one human being striving to understand another. In that way, the world at once becomes smaller, in terms of a humanistic closeness, and larger, in that such an empathetic embrace can enrich one’s own life even as it spans countries and cultures. Lida’s “One Life” is a compelling and crucial read.
December 9, 2016
I find it very difficult to rate this book. Did I like it? I don´t know how to answer this question. It is not a pleasant subject and although it is well written the experience was not enjoyable. Again, the lack of enjoyment was due to the subject. I am Mexican and the book was completely foreign to me. To compare my lifestyle with Esperanza's would be ludicrous. We live in different planets but even when working with a very poor family in the Huasteca Hidalguense during the filming of a television show for TV5France there was nothing comparable. The patriarch of the family hardly spoke Spanish, they did not have a stove or a refrigerator but still, their life could be considered perfect if you compare it with what the characters in the book. When I lived in New Orleans I was an interpreter at Circuit Court and got to see first hand the lopsided treatment that Mexicans or Latinos received firsthand. The use of the expression "el gabacho" was also new to me. Slang, unlike formal language, evolves very rapidly. But in my time, "gabacho" was used when speaking about people from France. I am lucky enough to be able to say that David Lida is a friend and neighbor, and I admire his work as a mitigation officer and his knowledge of Mexico City
November 15, 2016
Anyone interested in Latin American migration should read this (especially now, given the situation in the US). It's a totally compelling glimpse into how undocumented Mexicans live in the United States and back in Mexico. And because it is so autobiographical (Lida, like the main character, is a death-penalty mitigation specialist), you know that all the tiny, crushing details are true.
I was most moved by a few passages that show how intimately connected Americans are with Mexicans, through consumer goods and services. Truly, everything we see in the world (besides nature) is the product of someone's job, and very often these jobs are done by migrants, each one with his or her own life.
As a novel, it's a bit creaky in spots--until now, Lida has been a journalist, and this shows. (I really enjoyed "First Stop in the New World," about Mexico City--a very different Mexico than the one in this novel.) But the book's other riches, and its relevance to current events, more than make up for any first-time-novelist weaknesses.
I was most moved by a few passages that show how intimately connected Americans are with Mexicans, through consumer goods and services. Truly, everything we see in the world (besides nature) is the product of someone's job, and very often these jobs are done by migrants, each one with his or her own life.
As a novel, it's a bit creaky in spots--until now, Lida has been a journalist, and this shows. (I really enjoyed "First Stop in the New World," about Mexico City--a very different Mexico than the one in this novel.) But the book's other riches, and its relevance to current events, more than make up for any first-time-novelist weaknesses.
October 13, 2016
Una vertiginosa y cruda novela sumergida por completo en el reinante salvajísmo Mexicano. La historia de Esperanza, una "muchacha" que podría ser hoy cualquiera en la mitad menos afortunada de México. Escritura amigable y sin pretenciones, llena de momentos tanto risibles como dramáticos. Sin perder el autor, nunca, la profundidad de la intención. 100% recomendado.
December 26, 2016
in depth characters, good thoughtful writing, sad and beautiful
January 19, 2017
Brilliant!
December 22, 2017
One Life should be required reading in these times. The writing is superb and perfect, engaging and accessible. Yes regions of Mexico are amongst the poorest on earth, though this should not lead one to assume their is no dignity or culture. The writer of this book apparently has first-hand experience as a Mitigation specialist investigator in Mexico. That this will not mean that it will be widely read makes me seethe with anger!
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews