I'm sure this book could be compared to that popular controversial book that got lots of attention earlier this year. I read them both and loved both of them.

This book tells several women's stories. Luz works hard and tries to stay unnoticed. She is here but is scared because of her immigration status. She sends her money home and finally gets her son to America. Once in America her teenage son Eliseo kinda is a turd. He gets mixed up in some shady stuff and goes missing. Luz is heartbroken and must find her missing son.

Nadia stays drunk except to work enough to get more to drink. She wants to forget her entire life before America...but then she doesn't want to forget that life.

And then a young woman held in a garment factory. She was promised once she worked enough to pay her voyage here she would be set free.

These three women's stories are strong and relatable. One thing that Johnny Shaw does very, very well is write relatable characters. He makes them real.
Mr. Shaw comes to the upper part of my mind when people ask my favorite authors. I LOVE his funny books and I'm excited that he is challenging himself to chose different story lines to go forward with. I'd read his grocery list though. (Don't think if he writes a stinker that I won't say so though...I'm a legendary heifer)

Booksource: I'm a total dumbass. I requested this book through Netgalley. I went to read it and I thought it had expired. I whined like a big old crybaby and the kind author sent me another copy. Fast forward. My dumbass had downloaded it. I'm blaming 2020 for my old lady brains.

Synopsis/blurb....

THE SOUTHLAND tells the story of three unauthorized Mexican immigrants living in Los Angeles: Luz works multiple jobs to provide for herself and her teenage son Eliseo. Nadia, a former journalist with PTSD, fled Mexico and tries to stay hidden from the dangerous men that she exposed in Sinaloa. Ostelinda works as a laborer in a garment factory, having been deceived by coyotes and imprisoned in the same building since her arrival. Their lives intersect through terrifying circumstance that clarify and contrast the horrors of existence.

When Eliseo goes missing, Luz is lost. She doesn’t trust the authorities to help. One wrong move could get her deported. Luz has no option but to investigate her son’s disappearance on her own. Engaging Nadia and her roommate, they navigate an increasingly hostile American environment in an effort to reunite Luz’s small family. When Luz and Nadia uncover a link to the people that run the garment factory, the two women become determined to save more than just Luz’s son.

THE SOUTHLAND is a crime story, but more than that, it’s a story of America and the dangers that migrants face when being forced to live in the shadows.
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My take....

Hard-hitting and at times uncomfortable reading...... we have victims - the dispossessed, the exploited, the invisible, the deceived, the exiled, the hidden - all bereft of opportunity and hope; trapped in a world far removed from the promised Land of the Free.

It's a novel that depicts both the best and worst of humanity. It's shows how those with the least to give and the most to lose, offer what they have regardless of the consequences.

It's topical, timely and on point. I think it offers more than just entertainment and a fast read. It opens up a window to a world which a lot of the mainstream media have already decided on the message for the masses. It provides a more personal insight into the motivations of people who decide to sacrifice home and family, to put themselves in great danger in pursuit of a dream of something safer and brighter.

Dreams don't always come true though, sometimes they're vanquished like a snuffed candle, sometimes they get skewed and twisted and occasionally with enduring spirit and heart and bravery, they persist and you adapt and you go on.

My first time with author Johnny Shaw, but not my last.

4.5 from 5

Read - September, 2020
Published - 2020
Page count - 156
Source - Net Galley
Format - ePUB read on laptop

https://col2910.blogspot.com/2020/10/johnny-shaw-southland-2020.html

Southland is the story of three mexican immigrants . Their constant concern about deportation is palatable.
It is a timely tale of what it is like to be an immigrant in today's world. Will cause lots of contraversary

The Southland is my 1st novel by author, Johnny Shaw.
This is the story of three female Mexican refugees, all undocumented immigrants, trying to live in Los Angeles. Each character's story is compelling as we read of their struggles to survive while evading the Immigration authorities. Their lives do become connected in a horrifying, heartbreaking way.
A realistic, important read!
Superb storytelling that makes me want to read more of this author's work.

Thank you to NetGalley and Polis Books/Agora Books for a copy of this novel in exchange for my honest review.

A dark but realistic look at the life of three Mexican immigrants trying to survive in the US. The mystery layered into the novel added to the pace and tied every thing together.

This book had my interest from the first page to the end. Each character was going through their own struggles each and you slowly find out about each one. Who Luz feels like she lost her son because left to come to America and left him at a young age, now there is a disconnect between them yet she still needs to work two jobs and how she is looked at, at though jobs mainly for being of brown skin but also female.
Ostelinda works in the garment factory in downtown LA. And I was taken back to the sixties and seventies when raids of sweet shops were conducted and was a big thing on the news, do I think it still happens yes. Hell, my father was kid sewing hats in the thirties from an orphanage he lived in so yes, I still think it goes on. Her life and her sister are just one story of many and could be anyone who has come across.
Nadia's story is a slow reveal throughout this book and the more each layer is pulled away he are shown her pain and loss. Now she feels like she has a reason for living and that is beginning to be taken from her. Her story makes this story, but I guess they all do in one shape or another. I found this to be a good book and I enjoyed the read.

This book captured my interest from beginning to end and I finished it in two days. I'm giving it five stars for the exceptional writing and sensitive topic. I was drawn to this book especially for the subject matter of female undocumented Mexican refugees and their often-times difficult lives in the U.S.

.Although fiction, the story could be true in many ways. That's what I liked about it. The sad truth about how refugees and immigrants are treated in this country needs to be told. There are factories and other places of work that employ the undocumented for very low wages and they are still very much looked down upon in American society. They struggle constantly for the better life they hoped to have, but often isn't the case.

This is a book well worth reading.

Outstanding book about the problems of illegal Mexican and Latino persons in today's America. In fact, most of the characters were not illegal, but had been lured into America through the promise of a better life from evangelical organizations. The brutal treatment and trials are well documented through the eyes of multiple characters and make the case for a complete revamp of the American ICE systems and its treatment of humble, hard working people. Recommended reading.

Loved it!
Full #murderincommon reviw here: https://murderincommon.com/2020/07/19/johnny-shaw-the-southland/

I received a free advance copy of this from NetGalley for review.

If America keeps going like it has been lately then we won’t have an illegal immigration problem because nobody will want to come to this shithole country anyhow.

U-S-A!! U-S-A!! U-S-A!!

The Southland focuses on three unauthorized Mexican immigrants in Los Angeles. Luz works several menial jobs and was able to finally bring her teen-aged son, Eliseo, into the US after being separated from him for years. Unfortunately, he turns out to be a sullen, angry, lazy kid who complicates her precarious existence. Nadia had to flee Mexico and she’s got far more dangerous people than ICE agents looking for her so she’s trying to stay off of everybody’s radar. She copes with her situation by drinking heavily with her American friend and roommate, Gillies. Ostelinda was lured to America with the promise of a good job, but she is told that she has a debt to work off. Now she’s essentially a slave in a factory who hasn’t even been outside in over a year.

When Eliseo goes missing after an argument with Luz, she’s desperate to find her son, but since she can’t turn to the authorities she pays Gillies to find him. Gillies doesn’t plan on doing anything other than using Luz’s money to buy more booze, but at Nadia’s insistence they begin looking for the missing teen. Meanwhile, Ostelinda is trying to find a way to escape the factory by outwitting the American woman who runs the place.

I’ve been a fan of Johnny Shaw’s for better part of a decade now, and this is undeniably his best book yet. His previous stuff was always entertaining and frequently hilarious, but there’s a real maturity and gravity to this one that makes it feel he worked very hard to get to a next level. It’s not that his earlier stuff hasn’t featured real world issues, but he’s generally used humorous dialogue and a sense of chaos brought about by various dumbasses doing dumbass things to drive the plots. With the three main characters facing serious consequences for any misstep that could get them deported or worse, there’s no room for buffoonery, and that makes this book feel deadly serious throughout it all.

It’s not just that Shaw took a hot button issue and based a novel on it. He’s always had a feel for creating working class characters, and with his three leading ladies this time he’s outdone himself. Although each one shares the similarity of being an undocumented immigrant, they are distinctive and real. Luz is a hardworking mother who feels like she’s failed her son. Nadia is a woman with a tragic history trying to outrun her past. Ostelinda is an innocent caught up in a bad situation who somehow finds small moments of grace to keep her spirit from breaking.

First he makes us care about these women, and then Shaw shows us how screwed they really are. They’ve all become part of a system that is happy to exploit them for their labor even as the people in charge vilify them. They are also powerless against any random white asshole who gets irked at them. So Luz has to sit quietly on a bus as a man screams racist slurs at her. Nadia doesn’t dare complain when a boss cheats her on the amount of a promised wage. Ostelinda is told that she’s lucky to have a safe place to live and work while being a slave so she's not even sure what she would be able to do if she manages to get out of the factory.

Their circumstances also provide a wrinkle to the traditional mystery style plot. Luz can’t afford to drop everything and look for her son so she has to do her sleuthing around her work schedule. Nadia doesn’t dare make too many waves when she’s investigating either lest she draw the wrong kind of attention. This is a far cry from the usual thing where it’s the detective throwing their weight around and causing trouble as a way of drawing out the bad guys. It’s a lot harder to find someone when you don’t want anyone to notice that you’re looking, and when you don’t dare call the cops even when you’re dealing with real criminals.

It’s a crime story that also provides emphatic insight into what undocumented workers face in America these days. It’s not pretty. It’s not a lot of fun. But it’s an important story, and Johnny Shaw has told it about as well as it could be done.

“The Southland” is a novel which focuses on the lives of a handful of illegal aliens and their plight as they attempt to build lives in the United States and avoid being caught by immigration authorities. Their individual lives become connected when they become involved in a human trafficking and slavery ring for which some of the characters are victims.

Life as an undocumented immigrant is hard. Perhaps even more so as a woman.
Three different women are living this life in LA, three different stories. Luz is leading an inconspicuous life holding two jobs, Nadia is homeless although she has got valid reason for asylum and Ostelinda is a victim of human trafficking and modern slavery. When Luz's son goes missing and they learn about Ostelinda's captivity fear keeps them from turning to the authorities and they try by themselves to solve the problems, a dangerous endeavor.
The story is told in an unsentimental and realistic way and sounds totally believable.

This was a reading choice themed to the Supreme Court’s DACA decision. But hey, I would have read it anyway, I like immigrant experience stories. Even before these stories became trendy to like and immigrants became governmentally sanctioned to hate. This story follows three Latin American women, all unauthorized immigrants, living, or trying to anyway, in Los Angeles. The narrative style is that of taking three individual threads and twisting them together into a cohesive total. And so we meet Luz, who works crappy cleaning jobs and has recently been reunited with her difficult 17 year old son, Ostelinda who’s been trafficked into the country and essentially enslaved by a hypocritically evil factory owner and Nadia, a subversive Mexican reporter, who fled the country because her life is in danger and there is a contact out on her due to her writing about the local government. One day Luz’ son, a kid who definitely had too much anger to end up well, disappears and, because she can’t go to the police, she sets off to find him herself, enlisting assistance of Nadia and her friend, a grizzled wildhaired alcoholic white guy with PTSD, who speaks perfect Spanish. In course of their investigation, Luz meets Ostelinda, now all the threads are connected and the story is set to play out straight down to its tragic resolution. I mean, of course, it’s tragic, what did you expect? Not justice, surely? At least not in a legal way. Maybe poetic. Maybe. Anyway, this turned out to be a really good read, it sneaks upon you, first you’re just along for the ride and then it really draws you in, despite the deceptive simplicity of narrative, once you get to know the characters you’re hooked. It’s definitely a character driven story, I like those. Ideologically, it’ll appeal to people directly in proportion to their thoughts on immigration. It doesn’t set of to change anyone’s minds in any overt matter (that seldom if ever works), instead what it does (and so well) is it represents the individuals and their journeys, which is very important because then they are difficult to ignore or think of in sweeping generalizations. So it’s a good book and an important book, not to mention very timely. And…go figure, in this day and age a male looking white looking author managed to publish a book about three Mexican women without any backlash or stink about cultural appropriation. Whaaa. Seriously. Must have slipped through the ever tightening nets of political correctness, you know the ones that did such a number on American Dirt, among others. Guess there’s something to be said for small publishing ventures. And good for them. Limiting stories to one’s personal experience/sex/gender/nationality/creed as deemed appropriate by the PC police is antithetical to what fictional writing is. There, I’ve said it, the soapbox is put away. But do read this book if you get a chance. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.

Life as an undocumented immigrant is hard. Perhaps even more so as a woman.
Three different women are living this life in LA, three different stories. Luz is leading an inconspicuous life holding two jobs, Nadia is homeless although she has got valid reason for asylum and Ostelinda is a victim of human trafficking and modern slavery. When Luz's son goes missing and they learn about Ostelinda's captivity fear keeps them from turning to the authorities and they try by themselves to solve the problems, a dangerous endeavor.
The story is told in an unsentimental and realistic way and sounds totally believable.

“The Southland” is a novel which focuses on the lives of a handful of illegal aliens and their plight as they attempt to build lives in the United States and avoid being caught by immigration authorities. Their individual lives become connected when they become involved in a human trafficking and slavery ring for which some of the characters are victims.

The story is well written as are all of the authors books. However, where this one falls short is when the author expresses his liberal views by making the authorities appear to be buffoons. None of it is necessary and it literally adds nothing to the story.

“The Southland” is worth reading as long as you know up front that it is written with the intent to make the reader feel sympathetic towards illegal aliens. For those of us who believe in law and order, it fails miserably in that respect.