Fear Is Just a Word: A Missing Daughter, a Violent Cartel, a Mother’s Quest for Vengeance

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. (Sept.)