One Life: A Novel

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.