Prayers for the Stolen

Prayers for the Stolen is a 2012 coming-of-age novel by American Mexican author Jennifer Clement, who resides in Mexico City. Clement formerly served as president of PEN Mexico, part of a worldwide association of playwrights, poets, editors, essayists, and novelists that advocates for freedom of expression. Clement took up this role at a time when Mexico was among the most dangerous countries in the world in which to work in journalism.

The narrator and protagonist of Prayers for the Stolen, Ladydi Martinez, tells the story of her life growing up in the mountain village of Chulavista, Mexico. This area is dominated by drug traffickers who also steal girls for sex trafficking. Although the girls try to make themselves ugly to avoid attention, one of Ladydi's friends is still kidnapped. Ladydi manages to survive and leaves her village to work as a nanny in Acapulco. On the drive to Acapulco, she witnesses her friend's brother, Mike, murdering a drug dealer and his daughter. Ladydi ends up living in an abandoned house in Acapulco because her employers have also been murdered, and she is later accused of Mike's crime, arrested, and sent to a prison in Mexico City. However, her mother and half-sister manage to rescue her, and they set off to pursue a new life in America.

Prayers for the Stolen emphasizes the challenges of escaping the conditions and circumstances a person is born into, and the associations people construct between homeland, history, social capital, and identity in order to rationalize the subjugation of entire communities. Though Ladydi’s fate is uncertain at the end of the novel, her story offers the hopeful possibility of social mobility for the subjugated out of the conditions of abuse and into more equitable environments.

This guide uses the 2015 Vintage Books edition of Prayers for the Stolen.

Content Warning: This guide references several difficult and upsetting issues including sex trafficking, drug trafficking, rape, murder, kidnapping, and self-harm.

Plot Summary

In Part 1, Chapters 1 to 6, the narrator and protagonist, Ladydi Martinez, describes her life growing up in the rural mountain village of Chulavista in the state of Guerrero, Mexico. The area is dominated by powerful drug traffickers who also kidnap girls for sex trafficking. Ladydi’s mother, Rita, and the other parents in the village try to conceal their daughters’ developing beauty to keep them safe, and hide the girls in holes in the ground whenever they hear the traffickers’ SUVs approaching. Ladydi describes an incident when she was 10, after her friend Maria had her harelip surgically removed, when she and her mother found a corpse near their house. The corpse had a note from the drug traffickers saying that they wanted one of her friends, Paula. Ladydi then shares that one year later, her father left her mother—and Mexico—due to an argument over his affairs. Finally, she explains that the following year, when she was 12, Paula was accidentally covered with a chemical dropped by a helicopter to destroy drug crops. This led to Ladydi and her friends having to strip Paula out of her clothes to save her and a new teacher, Jose, seeing her naked.

In Part 1, Chapters 7 to 11, toward the end of the school year, drug traffickers steal Ruth, the owner of the local beauty salon. While helping clean the classroom, 13-year-old Ladydi is kissed by the departing Jose. Shortly after this incident, drug traffickers come for Ladydi, but she manages to escape to a hole and hide from them. Unfortunately, they manage to capture Paula. A new teacher arrives at the village school, and one year later, Paula unexpectedly returns. She tells Ladydi her story of being sold to a powerful drug dealer. The next day, Paula and her mother flee the village to avoid being caught again, and Ladydi finds a collection of Paula’s photographs. She later meets Maria to show them to her. However, when they are walking back to Ladydi’s house, Ladydi’s mother, who is drunk, shoots Maria, mistaking her for her husband. Fortunately, Ladydi manages to get Maria to the hospital in time, and she survives.

In Part 2, Chapters 12 to 19, Maria’s brother, Mike, drives Ladydi to her first day of work as a nanny in Acapulco. On the way, Mike takes a detour to a shack on a dirt road. He goes inside, and Ladydi waits in the car. When Mike returns, his jeans are covered with blood. He drops Ladydi off at her new employer’s house. The next day, she meets and falls in love with the gardener of the property, Julio. When their employers have not returned home for several weeks, they learn from the news that the entire family was killed. Ladydi and Julio decide to stay in the house anyway and move in to the master bedroom together. After they’ve lived together for seven months, Ladydi’s mother calls to tell her that Mike has been arrested for murder and has implicated Ladydi. Three days later, the police arrive at the house. Julio escapes, but Ladydi is arrested and taken to the women’s prison in Mexico City.

In Part 3, Chapters 20 to 27, Ladydi arrives at the women’s prison in Mexico City. She is put in a cell with a woman from Guatemala called Luna. Luna arranges for Ladydi to borrow a cell phone, and Ladydi calls her mother. Ladydi’s mother explains that she will bring Ladydi’s birth certificate to the prison to prove that she is under 18, so that she will be transferred out of the women’s prison. On visitors’ day at the prison, Maria shows up rather than Rita. Maria explains that her own mother was killed by traffickers, but Ladydi’s mother looks after her. She also tells Ladydi that Rita is staying nearby and has arranged the paperwork for her to be released. The next day, Ladydi’s mother and Maria pick her up from the prison in a taxi. However, rather than taking her to attend a meeting with social services, where she will be transferred to a juvenile prison, they decide to make a break for the United States and start a new life there. Ladydi then reveals, as they drive away, that she is pregnant.