MS-13: The Making of America’s Most Notorious Gang

Journalist Dudley, who spent the last two decades covering crime in Latin America, brings his expertise to his chilling debut about the street gang Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13. Started more than 40 years ago in Los Angeles, the gang consisted of mostly teenage Salvadoran boys who wanted to forget the violence of their home country and its civil war by drinking and playing loud music. But it grew into a vicious group known for brutal murders. After gang members were rounded up, sent to U.S. prisons, and then deported, they recreated the gang in El Salvador and spread to other Central American nations. Dudley personalizes the history of MS-13 in a boy he calls Norman, a typical gang member, who as a child in El Salvador turned to the gang to protect him from the army, the war, and domestic violence. Eventually, Norman fled to the U.S. to get out of MS-13, but he has lived in fear ever since. For anyone who has ever wondered why and how gang members are made, Dudley has the answers. Agent: Daniel Greenberg, Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary. (May)