View source for Prayers for the Stolen by Jennifer Clement

{{infobox
|title=Prayers for the Stolen
|author=Jennifer Clement
|reviewer=Rebecca Foster
|genre=Literary Fiction
|rating=3.5
|buy=No
|borrow=Yes
|isbn=9780099587590
|pages=240
|publisher=Vintage
|date=February 2015
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099587599</amazonuk>
|amazonus=<amazonus>0099587599</amazonus>
|website=http://www.jennifer-clement.com/
|video=wa-U9USvYaA
|summary=Beautiful girls are under constant threat from traffickers in Ladydi's part of Mexico. A harrowing coming-of-age story.
}}
Ladydi Garcia Martínez lives in rural Chilpancingo, Mexico, with her mother, Rita, who works as a cleaning lady for a rich family. Like many of the men in their town who left to find work, Ladydi's father crossed the river into America, where he is rumoured to have another family. As a result, this is very much a matriarchal community. Rita describes the situation for Ladydi's teacher: 'You men don't get it, yet, do you? This is a land of women. Mexico belongs to women.'

Yet it is very dangerous to be a woman in the desert state of Guerrero. Little girls like Ladydi are uglified, disguised as boys, or hidden in holes in the ground so as not to be stolen by the drug dealers who come by in SUVs with tinted windows. These men traffic girls as well as heroin. No one worries about her best friend, Maria; a harelip ensures no one will steal her. The rest of them are fair game, though. In her flat first-person narration, Ladydi remembers when their friend Paula disappeared. She came back one year later, but was never the same. 

There are hazards on all sides for Ladydi and her friends. If it's not AIDS, it's scorpions; if not the poisonous herbicide spray dropped from the sky onto the marijuana and opium poppy crops, then stray bullets. Little wonder, then, that Ladydi gets drunk for the first time when she is only 11. Even a temporary respite from life's troubles is welcome. Otherwise, the grinding desperation just perpetuates itself; as Ladydi observes, 'In our pockmarked world no one bothered filling up bullet holes or painting walls.'

Ladydi jumps at the chance for a new start when, aged 16, she is hired as a nanny for the Domingo family in Acapulco. Yet on the way there, Maria's brother Michael involves her in a drug deal. Even as Ladydi falls in love with Julio, the Domingos' gardener, and imagines a future with him, the consequences of her old life threaten to catch up with her. Lady Diana Spencer was the epitome of the fairy tale romance, but the use of her name here is an ironic reminder of how far the protagonist is from an ideal life. 'I was not named Ladydi after Diana's beauty and fame … [but] because of her shame. My mother said that Lady Diana had lived the true Cinderella story: closets full of broken glass slippers, betrayal, and death.'

This is a memorable, harrowing story. However, a few things kept me from fully identifying with Ladydi. One is the absence of speech marks, which I often find distances me from a novel's events. Another is the fact that the early action keeps jumping back and forth in time, so that it can be difficult to keep track of how old Ladydi is at various points. Perhaps to cope with the brutality of her existence, she keeps her narration very matter-of-fact, even detached. For me, that somewhat blunts the novel's full effect.

Clement was raised in Mexico and based this book on extensive interviews with the women affected by the country's culture of drugs and violence, as well as women in prison. In a world where up to 800,000 people are trafficked annually (a U.S. State Department estimate), often for sexual purposes, it is essential to raise awareness of the plight of women. That is what Clement has done with her gritty and at times disturbing coming-of-age novel. Though the plot grows darker than you might imagine, there is still a glimmer of hope for Ladydi at the end.

Further reading suggestion: [[Down The Rabbit Hole by Juan Pablo Villalobos]] gives a similar child's perspective on life among a Mexican drug cartel.

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