American Heroin by Melissa Scrivner Love

Published by Crown on February 19, 2019

American Heroin is a sequel to Lola. You might want to read Lola because it’s a good book, and you should definitely read it before American Heroin to give context to some offhand comments that Lola Vazquez makes about her eventful past.

Lola is something of a criminal feminist, fighting to hold power as a gang leader in a profession that is dominated by men. To do that, she must be as tough and merciless as male gang leaders. Yet she brings a certain sensitivity to her work, an affinity for abused women and children, a conscience that does not let her live easily with the consequences of her violence.

Lola lives in Huntington Park in Los Angeles County, where she controls the heroin trade on certain street corners in partnership with a Machiavellian prosecutor named Andrea. Their partnership is uneasy, and Lola is not quite sure whether Andrea ever acts in anyone’s interest but her own. Lola, at least, takes care of her gang and her neighborhood, which she rules over like a benevolent but ruthless queen.

In the novel’s early stages, Lola is tricked into ordering the killing of man she doesn’t know. She also learns that a new cartel is taking the place of the one she helped bring down in Lola. Those two events turn out to be related in a way that puts Lola’s career and life at risk. What Lola does not immediately realize is that she has started a war that will also put her younger brother’s life at risk.

American Heroin introduces Louisa Mae, another victim of a violent childhood, a girl who learned in desperation to resort to violence herself. A cartel wants her dead because she is her father’s daughter. Louisa Mae’s story is interspersed with Lola’s. The reader eventually learns how those lives are connected. The connection is surprising.

Lola inhabits a world where, unlike white middle-class neighbors not far from hers, a child might catch a stray bullet at any moment. Lola’s adopted (sort of) daughter Lucy accepts the normalcy of that life, but Lola is adjusting to parental fears. The story’s best dramatic moments come not from Lola’s role as a gang leader, but from her insecurities as a mother. Multiple family dramas unfold as American Heroin steams to its conclusion.

Lola is a victim of her circumstances but she has learned to control those circumstances to the extent that control is possible. As Lola ponders the possibility of making a different kind of life, one in a safe neighborhood that isn’t associated with crime and violence, she wonders whether she would have a chance of being accepted in a white, upper-middle-class world, and whether she would want to be. A trip to Texas highlights the subtle racism that Latinas encounter in white-dominated environments.

Lola has more substance than a typical action hero, but when the time comes to fight, Lola can bring it. Like the last novel, this one includes a kick-in-the-gut moment that proves Lola’s ability to make tough decisions, substituting the ethics of a gang leader for the heart of a family leader. That Lola is a balance of good and evil may put off readers who always want to cheer for a protagonist, but I always prefer novels that recognize the war that so often rages in even the kindest hearts.

My most significant gripe about this series is that much of Lola’s substance is revealed through redundant monologues about what Lola is thinking or remembering. There are only so many times that Melissa Scrivner Love needs to tell the same story about Lola’s past or to share Lola’s present anxieties and doubts. There were times when I wanted to say “move on, we know this” except saying it would have been futile since Love wasn’t here to listen to my complaint. I also tend to be annoyed with novels that are written in the present tense (“Lola sets out to find Andrea”), but that might just be a personal quirk that won’t bother other readers.

As a thoughtful but fast-moving thriller with an unusual protagonist, American Heroin stands out from conventional crime novels. Lola might be an anti-hero, but she’s a hero to those who depend on her, just as Don Corleone was valued by those to whom he granted favors — until he came to collect a favor in return. I have enjoyed the character development in the two Lola books and I hope there are more on the horizon.

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Lola by Melissa Scrivner Love

Published by Crown on March 21, 2017

Novels that focus on gangs and inner city crime are trendy, but Lola stands apart from the crowd by focusing on a 26-year-old woman who sees the gang from a female perspective. The woman, of course, is the titular Lola. She has a secret that is revealed in a surprising moment about 50 pages into the story. Without spoiling the secret, I can say that it causes the reader to rethink the nature of the central character.

Garcia belonged to Kim before, but now he’s Lola’s man. Garcia is regarded as the top man in the Crenshaw Six. Lola used to date Kim’s older brother, back when he was the top man, but she moved on to Garcia after Kim’s brother was murdered. Lola understands that playing a subordinate role is the key for a woman to survive in the world of gangs, but she’s too smart to be content.

Garcia is offered an opportunity to move the Crenshaw Six to a considerably higher place in the gang hierarchy, but at considerable risk, particularly to Lola, whose life (according to the enforcer who offers the job) will be taken as retribution if the gang screws up. It is when the mission doesn’t go well that we learn Lola’s secret.

After that, the story is about Lola’s quest to score the $4 million she needs to save her life, and about a series of unfortunate encounters with rival drug gangs, a powerful drug cartel, the police, neighborhood nuisances, and Lola’s mother. Each event in a sequence of unfortunate events places Lola in an even more precarious position. Balanced against that plot is Lola’s confrontation with the expectations of affluent white society as she tries to rescue a neighborhood girl from a life of abuse.

A key character is Lola’s brother Hector, who has been having sex with a girl whose brother is in a rival gang. Hector has a decency that some of the other gangbangers lack, and while he is Lola’s brother, it is Lola’s job to enforce order when that decency prevents Hector from doing his job. The complexity of the family and gang relationships is one factor that sets this novel apart from most gang stories.

Police officers in Lola are generally portrayed as decent people, not as stereotyped heroes or villains, although a couple of bent cops add new twists to the plot. Even rich white people, for whom Lola has little sympathy, are portrayed sympathetically. Lola perceives “every stranger as a fatal struggle” but is often surprised by their lack of malicious intent.

The novel is written in the third person, but generally allows the reader to see the world from Lola’s perspective. Lola’s past is tragic, her environment is horrifying, but it is the only life and environment that Lola has, and while she shows no inclination to leave it, she is determined to conquer it. She is smart, cunning, and resourceful. Lola’s insight into the gang members and men in general contributes to her efforts to control them.

Parts of the novel, primarily the parts that discuss child abuse, are sad, but the sadness contributes to the novel’s power. The discussions are never graphic, but they are not hidden from view, so particularly sensitive readers might not be a good fit for the novel.

The narrative tends to overdo statements like “Lola wonders whether she will be alive tomorrow” or “Lola wonders whether she will ever eat another pizza.” Occasional references to Lola’s concern about her future are fine, but we don’t need to be reminded on every page that Lola’s future is precarious. Lola also tends to overdo her fretting about her position in the world. Still, those are my only complaints about a novel that I thoroughly enjoyed.

The surprising complexity of shifting relationships gives the story greater depth than it appears to have on its surface. By most standards, Lola is not a good person, and some readers will dislike the novel for that reason. By the standards that define her existence in “a world that doesn’t want her,” Lola might be a better person than most. Readers who are open to that distinction will probably like Lola as a person and as a novel.

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