One Life by Lida, David

Richard helps save the lives of the guilty.

With his parents dead and a failed marriage behind him, he now lives in Mexico City. His work as a mitigation expert is a tidy fit for an ex-novelist and a guy not too keen on attachments. Hired by defense teams on capital cases, he investigates the often traumatic personal histories of clients potentially facing the death penalty. His speciality: undocumented Mexican defendants standing trial in the United States. In Richard's business, success isn't exoneration or proof of innocence, but life in prison.

Esperanza Morales is a young woman from the destitute Mexican village of Puroaire. Leaving a life of poverty and abuse, she finds work (and a room) as a maid in the home of an upper crust Mexican family. She works hard and builds a small life for herself, with a little savings and a boyfriend to amuse her on Saturday nights. But the stability cannot last, and after she loses her job she is convinced by her boyfriend to go north. Her harrowing adventure crossing the border and life as an undocumented worker in the U.S. could be the story of millions of American migrants. What makes Esperanza exceptional is her ultimate fate: a prison cell in Louisiana, facing trial for the alleged murder of her baby.

When Richard visits Esperanza in prison, the boundaries of his closely circumscribed life explode. The young woman's story resurrects his novelistic instincts, and undermines his stoic approach to his job as he pursues clear answers in a case that offers anything but. Suddenly, Richard is aspiring for more, far more, than he ever believed he would. Set in the American south and in rural Mexico, ONE LIFE is an unflinching, page-turning novel that examines the difference between pragmatism and cynicism, the indelible links between sex, death and love, and the meaning of justice.

Author: David Lida
Publisher: Unnamed Press
Published: 10/11/2016
Pages: 246
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.85lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.50w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9781939419958

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 08/01/2016
Kirkus Reviews 01/01/0001
Kirkus Reviews 08/15/2016
Shelf Awareness 10/21/2016

About the Author
David Lida is the author of four books, including the very well received travel narrative First Stop in the New World (Riverhead, 2009). One Life is his first novel and will be published in Mexico in Spanish in 2016. He has been a journalist for more than twenty years, principally in the U.S. and Mexico, but also for magazines in England, Canada and Peru. He is based in Mexico City. When he is not writing, he works as an investigator for lawyers in the U.S. who defend Latin Americans that are facing the death penalty.