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A riveting true story of a mother who fought back against the drug cartels in Mexico, pursuing her own brand of justice to avenge the kidnapping and murder of her daughter—from a global investigative correspondent for The New York Times “Azam Ahmed has written a page-turning mystery but also a stunning, color-saturated portrait of the collapse of formal justice in one Mexican town.”—Steve Coll, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Directorate S A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: New Yorker, The Economist, Chicago Public Library Fear Is Just a Word begins on an international bridge between Mexico and the United States, as fifty-six-year-old Miriam Rodríguez stalks one of the men she believes was involved in the murder of her daughter Karen. He is her target number eleven, a member of the drug cartel that has terrorized and controlled what was once Miriam’s quiet hometown of San Fernando, Mexico, almost one hundred miles from the U.S. border. Having dyed her hair red as a disguise, Miriam watches, waits, and then orchestrates the arrest of this man, exacting her own version of justice. Woven into this deeply researched, moving account is the story of how cartels built their power in Mexico, escalated the use of violence, and kidnapped and murdered tens of thousands. Karen was just one of the many people who disappeared, and Miriam, a brilliant, strategic, and fearless woman, begged for help from the authorities and paid ransom money she could not afford in hopes of saving her daughter. When that failed, she decided that “fear is just a word,” and began a crusade to track down Karen’s killers and to help other victimized families in their search for justice. What do people do when their country and the peaceful town where they have grown up become unrecognizable, suddenly places of violence and fear? Azam Ahmed takes us into the grieving of a country and a family to tell the mesmerizing story of a brave and brilliant woman determined to find out what happened to her daughter, and to see that the criminals who murdered her were punished. Fear Is Just a Word is an unforgettable and moving portrait of a woman, a town, and a country, and of what can happen when violent forces leave people to seek justice on their own.
A riveting true story of a mother who fought back against the drug cartels in Mexico, pursuing her own brand of justice to avenge the kidnapping and murder of her daughter—from a global investigative correspondent for The New York Times “Azam Ahmed has written a page-turning mystery but also a stunning, color-saturated portrait of the collapse of formal justice in one Mexican town.”—Steve Coll, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Directorate S A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: New Yorker, The Economist, Chicago Public Library Fear Is Just a Word begins on an international bridge between Mexico and the United States, as fifty-six-year-old Miriam Rodríguez stalks one of the men she believes was involved in the murder of her daughter Karen. He is her target number eleven, a member of the drug cartel that has terrorized and controlled what was once Miriam’s quiet hometown of San Fernando, Mexico, almost one hundred miles from the U.S. border. Having dyed her hair red as a disguise, Miriam watches, waits, and then orchestrates the arrest of this man, exacting her own version of justice. Woven into this deeply researched, moving account is the story of how cartels built their power in Mexico, escalated the use of violence, and kidnapped and murdered tens of thousands. Karen was just one of the many people who disappeared, and Miriam, a brilliant, strategic, and fearless woman, begged for help from the authorities and paid ransom money she could not afford in hopes of saving her daughter. When that failed, she decided that “fear is just a word,” and began a crusade to track down Karen’s killers and to help other victimized families in their search for justice. What do people do when their country and the peaceful town where they have grown up become unrecognizable, suddenly places of violence and fear? Azam Ahmed takes us into the grieving of a country and a family to tell the mesmerizing story of a brave and brilliant woman determined to find out what happened to her daughter, and to see that the criminals who murdered her were punished. Fear Is Just a Word is an unforgettable and moving portrait of a woman, a town, and a country, and of what can happen when violent forces leave people to seek justice on their own.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Excerpts-
From the coverA Lost Daughter
It was 4 a.m. on January 24, 2014, when Miriam’s phone rang and her daughter Azalea’s name popped up.
“What happened?” Miriam asked.
“Something awful.”
“With Ernesto?” Miriam asked.
“No,” Azalea answered, now sobbing. “With Karen.”
After hanging up with her daughter, Miriam had quickly packed and left a note for the family she was working for in McAllen, Texas. She told them she would not be coming back. By 6 a.m. on that day four years after the Zeta takeover of San Fernando, Miriam Rodríguez stood outside in the stark January winter waiting for the bus from Reynosa to San Fernando, a two-hour journey through the center of the state.
She had made her way to the international bridge in Reynosa, the same one she had carried Karen across more than twenty years earlier, when Karen was a toddler. On the bus to San Fernando, Miriam sat near the back and silently wept in the near dark. A few people tried to console her. She understood now that the sympathy of outsiders could never measure up to the chasm left by a kidnapped loved one.
An elderly man across the aisle handed her his handkerchief.
“Are you okay?” he asked. Miriam, normally guarded around strangers, told him her daughter had been kidnapped by the Zeta cartel.
The man nodded, pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket, scribbled something onto it, and handed it to her.
“That is the name and telephone number of my son,” he told her. “He’s a lieutenant in the marines.”
Miriam stuffed the number into her purse and forgot about it. Shortly after 8 a.m., the bus entered the municipality of San Fernando.
Hours earlier, Azalea, who was thirty-four and married, had been half asleep when she heard movement near her front door, the slow shuffle of feet across the patio tile and a low groan that she could recognize anywhere: her father. I.
A Lost Daughter
It was 4 a.m. on January 24, 2014, when Miriam’s phone rang and her daughter Azalea’s name popped up.
“What happened?” Miriam asked.
“Something awful.”
“With Ernesto?” Miriam asked.
“No,” Azalea answered, now sobbing. “With Karen.”
After hanging up with her daughter, Miriam had quickly packed and left a note for the family she was working for in McAllen, Texas. She told them she would not be coming back. By 6 a.m. on that day four years after the Zeta takeover of San Fernando, Miriam Rodríguez stood outside in the stark January winter waiting for the bus from Reynosa to San Fernando, a two-hour journey through the center of the state.
She had made her way to the international bridge in Reynosa, the same one she had carried Karen across more than twenty years earlier, when Karen was a toddler. On the bus to San Fernando, Miriam sat near the back and silently wept in the near dark. A few people tried to console her. She understood now that the sympathy of outsiders could never measure up to the chasm left by a kidnapped loved one.
An elderly man across the aisle handed her his handkerchief.
“Are you okay?” he asked. Miriam, normally guarded around strangers, told him her daughter had been kidnapped by the Zeta cartel.
The man nodded, pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket, scribbled something onto it, and handed it to her.
“That is the name and telephone number of my son,” he told her. “He’s a lieutenant in the marines.”
Miriam...
Reviews-
Starred review from July 17, 2023 New York Times reporter Ahmed debuts with a riveting chronicle of Mexico’s cartels told through the story of one family who became their target. In 2010, the vicious Zeta cartel took control of the small Mexican town of San Fernando after a bloody fight with the Gulf cartel. Kidnappings and murders escalated for years under Zeta rule, until the “disappeared” numbered in the hundreds. Divorced, middle-aged mother Miriam Rodriguez had her quiet life in San Fernando turned upside down when the Zetas took her daughter, Karen, in 2012. Rodriguez paid the $77,000 ransom for Karen’s safe return, but she never turned up. Devastated, Rodriguez came to accept that Karen had been killed and resolved to track down the people responsible. Battling both cartels and corrupt local officials, she used Facebook and anonymous tips to find and detain a long list of targets connected to Karen’s disappearance, taking down 10 in all. On Mother’s Day, 2017, Rodriguez was gunned down outside her home shortly after turning in the latest of Karen’s captors. Though Ahmed offers glimmers of hope throughout, his ultimate outlook is bleak: “Some life had returned to San Fernando from the worst days,” he writes about Miriam’s successes in weakening Zeta leadership and reducing violence in the region. “But the empty relics of better times still paid tribute to before.” Painstakingly reported and propulsively written, this is nearly impossible to put down. Agent: Amanda Urban, ICM Partners.
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