Good, bad, and ugly in Prayers for the Stolen

Jennifer Clements's Prayers for the Stolen consists of 3 sections, each an entirely different setting and each a vivid and largely credible view of life in Mexico among a working-class populace terrorized by the drug cartels: the first the small town in the state of Guerrero made up entirely of women (the men gone north, sometimes sending $ back home) and daughters who are passed off as boys to keep them out of the hands of teh drug lords who steal them and force them into slavery or prostitution; 2nd, after the drug lords "disappear" several of the women in the town, the narrator, Ladydi, about 15 years old?, heads off w/ small-time drug dealer to take a job he's found for her as a nanny for two rich kids in Acapulco - this section of the novel set  mostly in the household where, over 7 months, the family never shows up (we learn later that they've been killed - again, part of the drug wars) and Ladydi falls in love with the gardener (only other character is the maid, an older woman) - this section seems to strain credibility - how were they paying the bills, for example - but it's a look at the sick wealth of the other half. Third section, police come to pick up Ladydi on a murder charge - she's implicated in the death of a young girl (a drug lord's daughter), killed by the guy (Mike) who got her the job in Acapulco; now, in final section, Ladydi is in women's prison in Mexico City, and she and various prisoners tell one another their stories - a sorrowful and convincing look at prison life, and solidarity among the inmates. So, there are many powerful moments in this novel and a lot "happens," but as noted in previous post the novel is hurt badly by its lack of plot: yes things happen to Ladydi but she is never in any sense an active protagonist, just the object of the action of others. I have been criticized for this myself, but I think the novel is a serious of incidents without any apparent connection among them, so the effect is one of coolness and disengagement: Ladydi is not a Dickensian character overcoming her sorrowful fate, but a narrative tool: a window that Clements has opened to give us a view of and a scent of life in an ugly time and place. The novel's worth reading for the insight it provides on the victims of drug crimes, sexual abuse, immigration atrocities, but there's a flatness, a lack of affect, to the narration that makes it difficult to engage with the book and its characters on an emotional level.