Fear Is Just a Word

A Missing Daughter, a Violent Cartel, and a Mother's Quest for Vengeance

By: Azam Ahmed

Narrated by: Sheldon Romero

A riveting true story of a mother who fought back against the drug cartels in Mexico, pursuing her own brand of justice to avenge the kidnapping and murder of her daughter—from a global investigative correspondent for The New York Times

“Azam Ahmed has written a page-turning mystery but also a stunning, color-saturated portrait of the collapse of formal justice in one Mexican town.”—Steve Coll, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Directorate S

LONGLISTED FOR THE MOORE PRIZE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS WRITING • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: New Yorker, The Economist, Chicago Public Library

Fear Is Just a Word begins on an international bridge between Mexico and the United States, as fifty-six-year-old Miriam Rodríguez stalks one of the men she believes was involved in the murder of her daughter Karen. He is her target number eleven, a member of the drug cartel that has terrorized and controlled what was once Miriam’s quiet hometown of San Fernando, Mexico, almost one hundred miles from the U.S. border. Having dyed her hair red as a disguise, Miriam watches, waits, and then orchestrates the arrest of this man, exacting her own version of justice.

Woven into this deeply researched, moving account is the story of how cartels built their power in Mexico, escalated the use of violence, and kidnapped and murdered tens of thousands. Karen was just one of the many people who disappeared, and Miriam, a brilliant, strategic, and fearless woman, begged for help from the authorities and paid ransom money she could not afford in hopes of saving her daughter. When that failed, she decided that “fear is just a word,” and began a crusade to track down Karen’s killers and to help other victimized families in their search for justice.

What do people do when their country and the peaceful town where they have grown up become unrecognizable, suddenly places of violence and fear? Azam Ahmed takes us into the grieving of a country and a family to tell the mesmerizing story of a brave and brilliant woman determined to find out what happened to her daughter, and to see that the criminals who murdered her were punished. Fear Is Just a Word is an unforgettable and moving portrait of a woman, a town, and a country, and of what can happen when violent forces leave people to seek justice on their own.

©2023 Azam Ahmed (P)2023 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Ahmed writes about violence in Mexico with insight and sobriety, avoiding the usual markers of journalistic prose (descriptions of the research process, references to site visits). Instead, he maintains a cautious, at times exhilarating, distance from his material, letting the story unfold at a rapid pace, as if on its own, interweaving the contextual and the intimate in a series of vivid juxtapositions.” —Cristina Rivera Garza, The New York Times

“From one of the best reporters of his generation comes this masterful portrait of nightmarish violence, endless pain, and great courage. Azam Ahmed shows us what America’s insatiable lust for drugs has done to one Mexican family and town just across the border.” —George Packer, author of Our Man

Excellent research, sad to read but important.

Liked the writing. Appreciated the extensive research that brought me to my knees, because of the Mother’s strength and tears at the end. Highly recommend!

The best!

I'd give it 10 stars if I could. So well put together, and read! The best!

Heart Wrenching

Incredibly powerful story that gives a voice to the voiceless. The systemic failures on both sides of the border that allows this type violence to go uninterrupted needs a bright light shone on it.

Terrible narration, wish I’d read the print book instead

The narrator is clearly not fluent in English. The narration doesn’t flow; it sounds like a child reading out loud in class with all the emphasis and pauses in the wrong place. He also mispronounces a lot of words. It ruins what should be an engrossing story of a mother’s bravery.

Beautifully written and an important story to tell

Often, the stories of the individuals that are “desaparecido” in the drug war in Mexico go untold. Ahmed tells the story of Miriam’s “stop at nothing” approach to brining her daughter’s killers to justice. In the process of navigating the tangled bureaucracy in Mexico, Miriam’s grit and battle against the odds is a story that deserves to be told.

Brutality Of living in a Mexican Bordertown

I chose this book in follow-up to American Dirt to further my understanding of why many Mexicans flee to the United States. So much is on the news about stopping Mexicans and not enough about why they are trying to leave in droves. The brutality and killings seem to tied to nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The book certainly opened my eyes, but I could’ve done with more of a storyline. To me it was more a jumbo of characters names, and dates and towns. A biography of events. Sometimes going back-and-forth. I stuck through this to the end, but it left a hollow space in my heart as this continues to happen in Mexico every day.

The subject matter was great, performance no

I thought the author did a nice job, but the voice actor mispronounced about one word every two to three minutes. I almost quit at one point.

Examples: wanton pronounced wonton, he said parents's and other plurals with an extra S pretty consistently after about 30% in, and I can't remember any of the rest but it's extremely noticeable.

Narrator mispronounced everything

Worst narrator ever. I’ve never seen anything like this number of errors before. The story wasn’t great either. Felt like a stretched out magazine article.

Not as exciting as I hoped

I was really looking forward to this book. The idea of a middle aged mother taking down a brutal cartel sounded amazing. It turned out the bulk of the book is a history lesson on the cartel and the family’s backstory, and the part where the mother actually hunts down her daughter’s killers is actually given very little time. To make matters worse, the book skips around chronologically, so it is difficult to even tell what time period you are in.

The narrator is mostly good, but he mis-pronounces enough words to be bothersome. I have no problem with them using a non-native speaker (especially when he has to say so many Spanish words), but the fact that so many mispronunciations get through tells me that nobody proof-listened the recording, which just feels unprofessional.