Gonzalez and Daughter Trucking Co.: A Road Novel with Literary License

I love Maria Amparo Escandon. Her writing is real, full of life, and it touches you without being cheesy. This story made me evaluate my relationship with my father. It had never occurred to me that a father and a daughter could have as close of a relationship as one would expect from a mother and a daughter. You will enjoy this story from start to finish. Disfrutala mucho!

The best thing about this book was the fact that I learned so much about so many different things without even realizing it. Escandon taught me a whole new language, not Spanish, but trucker talk. Her writing flowed beautifully, and it was nice to see someone who didn't comparmentalize others. Just because ladies were in jail did not automatically make them bad people. She managed to show the reader multiple elements of many characters so that it was understood that each person had their strengths and weaknesses just as in life. It was an easy read, but also left me with a lot to chew on. Such fun!

I expected something of a magical realism novel, but this book surprised me with its very down-to-earth dual tales of a women's prison that was a refuge and the constantly moving truck that was in its way a prison. Libertad won't reveal her crime to her co-prisoners in the Mexican women's prison in Mexicali. The prison itself is a contrast to U.S. prisons because money talks and thus the prisons are far more free. She begins, however, to open up when she creates a Library Club, where she entertains the inmates, guards and the warden with tales of Mudflap Girl. Her alter ego, orphaned Mudflap Girl is raised by her father in the back of a truck from birth. We watch her grow up and seek her freedom from her increasingly controlling father, paranoid of capture by agents of the Mexican government from offenses occurring many years and many changes of government ago. Meanwhile, Libertad begins to learn that the prison is for her the home and the family she never knew. Mudflap Girl eventually commits the crime that led Libertad to her prison term, and the only way out for everyone is for her new family to right the wrongs that brought her there. Eventually, a happy ending is shared by all. Escandon's ability to create so many believable, in the terms of a novel like this, characters and so many worthwhile relationships is what made this novel come alive for me. Nothing is wasted, and every character has a place in the universe she creates. The only negative was that I thought the use of CB lingo was a bit over the top. But the characters of the Warden and the three Vietnamese refugee/prisoners and the relationship between Mudflap Girl and Martin more than made up for that. Highly recommended.

Me lleve este libro a mis vacaciones y no pude dejar de leerlo. Los personajes te atrapan lo mismo que las historias de Libertad Gonzalez, tanto en la carcel de Mexicali o mientras maneja trailers por los Estados Unidos. En esta novela la habilidad de Escandon como narradora de historias alcanza un nuevo nivel. Leelo y no te pierdas el sorprendente final.

Behind this allegory where the main character survives a paranoid father and living in a Mexican prison, hides a profound and funny story about how families can constrain you and how you can find a family in the most unlikely of places. Highly recommended.