SHE'S A LOT LIKE YOU

A school principal in Arizona crosses into Mexico to rescue a teenage girl from sex traffickers in Christ’s novel.

Enrique Tavish narrowly escapes a nightmare—guns blazing, he rescues his teenage daughter, Francesca, held captive and raped by members of a Mexican drug cartel. He returns to his more pedestrian life as the principal of Polk High School in Arizona but is tormented by thoughts of Rosa Martinez, the young girl who helped him find Francesca and who remains a prisoner of human traffickers somewhere in Mexico, sold into slavery by her own brother, Memo. Enrique makes a bold decision to travel across the border to the infamous red light district in Nogales to find Rosa, a fateful decision he shares with no one, not even his wife, Eloise. Implausibly—much of Christ’s riveting drama demands a considerable suspension of disbelief on the part of the reader—Enrique finds Rosa, drugged into a stupor, and must figure out how to convey her across the border as they are pursued by the thugs who believe they own her, afraid to encounter either the border patrol or the zealous militias who voluntarily police the border. Enrique is a memorably complex character; while heroically devoted to liberating Rosa, he’s also attracted to her, a condition exacerbated by his sexual addiction (“Reminded that she’s only fifteen, I feel some shame and avert my eyes”). Fascinatingly, Rosa’s sexual exploitation leaves him both horrified and queasily empathetic with the attackers, as his addiction leads him to “see every woman as a sexual target.” But Enrique has always lived in the interstices between different worlds—while he is light-skinned and often passes for White, he grew up in a Spanish-speaking household and largely befriended other Latine kids. The violence, especially toward the conclusion of the book, becomes increasingly fantastical, and this gritty drama flirts with devolving into a formulaic action movie. However, this is still a captivating and intelligent tale.

A terrifying story that unflinchingly explores the grim underworld of human trafficking.