Review of Gringo

[Nathaniel Owolabi]

[Following is a volunteer review of "Gringo" by Dan "Tito" Davis.]

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4 out of 4 stars

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Gringo by Dan “Tito” Davis tops the list of the non-fiction books I have ever read.

Gringo tells the story of the author, Tito (as he is often called), living the life of a fugitive on the run from the United States government. I never would have imagined that I would be rooting for a former drug dealer who is trying to avoid capture, especially in a nonfiction book, but that is exactly what I found myself doing in this book.

The early chapters of this book describe Tito as a boy who came from a humble family without a lot of wealth or property in their name. He continued to work hard and got his first job as a flag boy for crop dusters, sitting at the feet of the pilots and mapping the route for them. He later got a job as a jockey and made a lot of money. This opened him to what it felt like to be financially stable and able to afford what he wants, hence, making him yearn to earn as much money as he could, albeit borderline illegal.

Tito went on to college and got introduced to drugs for the first time, he started doing drugs- ephedrine popularly known as "white cross"- to pass his courses because the drugs apparently made studying easier. Eventually, he started dealing drugs after he had almost depleted his savings from his jockeying days. He kept on expanding his drug dealing business, becoming one of the drug-dealing masterminds of his time. He eventually got sent to jail, served time, and got out, then went back into the drug dealing business. He got framed and was on the verge of getting sentenced for the second time before he decided to run away and live the life of a fugitive. Hence began the real action and drama contained in this book.

This book exposes the readers to some real-life issues such as greed and the likes, the one which however caught my attention was the amount of corruption that goes on all around the world. While I knew there was corruption, I was amazed at how much corruption there is.

I really enjoyed reading this book. Even while writing the review I felt so much rush and excitement. Tito is such a great storyteller, he narrates this book in such a way that you begin to think it is a fictional book rather than the nonfiction that it actually is. This book tells the story of a fugitive from the perspective of the fugitive himself, what more can one wish for.

Unlike most Hollywood movies and other fictional books narrating stories such as this, Tito realistically tells this story, he gives intricate details about his experience while on the run, expressing to the readers his fears, his insecurities, and the emotions he felt at given times. He even wrote about when he fell sick and thought he was going to die. All these serve as a way to bring the readers closer to the character. I came to like Tito during my time reading this book. He seems like a good person with a good heart. At some point, I felt like he did not fit into the category of the people he mingled with. He seemed much softer and more humane.

This book is really good. It was worth every minute of the time I spent reading it, and besides the fact that the number of people he acknowledged at the beginning of the book was quite numerous, I could not find any fault with the book. It was well edited.

I cannot express in words how much I loved reading this book. It had me turning pages right from the beginning to the end. The author did a great job. I believe this book is well-deserving of all the rating points it can get. Hence, it gets a 4 out of 4 stars from me.

I recommend this book to nonfiction lovers and lovers of the travel genre. I should assure you that if you decide to read this book, you are in for a treat.

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Gringo
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[VictoriousReader]

You're right; the story sounds fictional. I wish 'Tito' could free himself from the shackles of drug-dealing. Thanks for the review.

[Oye Timothy]

Books inspired by real life events are fascinating to me. Nice review.