Luis Alberto Urrea

The definitive Mexican-American immigrant story, at once intimate and epic, from an acclaimed storyteller. In his final days, beloved and ailing patriarch Miguel Angel De La Cruz, known affectionately as Big Angel, has summoned his entire clan for one last legendary birthday party. But as the party approaches, his mother, nearly one hundred, dies herself, leading to a farewell doubleheader. Across one bittersweet weekend in their San Diego neighborhood, the revelers mingle among the palm trees and cacti, celebrating the lives of Big Angel and his mother, and recounting the many tales that have passed into family lore, the acts both ordinary and heroic that brought them to a fraught and sublime country and allowed them to flourish in the land they have come to call home. The story of the De La Cruzes is the American story. This indelible portrait of a complex family reminds us of what it means to be the first generation and to live two lives across one border. Teeming with brilliance and humor, authentic at every turn, The House of Broken Angels is Luis Alberto Urrea at his best, and it cements his reputation as a storyteller of the first rank.

An Instant  New York Times  Bestseller This “powerful, uplifting, and deeply personal novel”  (Kristin Hannah, #1  NYT  bestselling author of  The Four Winds ), at once “a heart-wrenching wartime drama” (Christina Baker Kline, #1  NYT  bestselling author of  Orphan Train ) and “a moving and graceful tribute to heroic women” ( Publishers Weekly , starred review), asks the What if a friendship forged on the front lines of war defines a life forever? In the tradition of   The Nightingale   and   Transcription , this is a searing epic based on the magnificent and true story of courageous Red Cross women. “Urrea’s touch is sure, his exuberance carries you through . . . He is a generous writer, not just in his approach to his craft but in the broader sense of what he feels necessary to capture about life itself.” — Financial Times In 1943, Irene Woodward abandons an abusive fiancé in New York to enlist with the Red Cross and head to Europe. She makes fast friends in training with Dorothy Dunford, a towering Midwesterner with a ferocious wit. Together they are part of an elite group of women, nicknamed Donut Dollies, who command military vehicles called Clubmobiles at the front line, providing camaraderie and a taste of home that may be the only solace before troops head into battle.             After D-Day, these two intrepid friends join the Allied soldiers streaming into France. Their time in Europe will see them embroiled in danger, from the Battle of the Bulge to the liberation of Buchenwald. Through her friendship with Dorothy, and a love affair with a courageous American fighter pilot named Hans, Irene learns to trust again. Her most fervent hope, which becomes more precarious by the day, is for all three of them to survive the war intact.   Taking as inspiration his mother’s own Red Cross service, Luis Alberto Urrea has delivered an overlooked story of women’s heroism in World War II. With its affecting and uplifting portrait of friendship and valor in harrowing circumstances, Good Night, Irene powerfully demonstrates yet again that Urrea’s “gifts as a storyteller are prodigious” (NPR).

The author of Across the Wire offers brilliant investigative reporting of what went wrong when, in May 2001, a group of 26 men attempted to cross the Mexican border into the desert of southern Arizona. Only 12 men came back out.

The prizewinning writer Luis Alberto Urrea's long-awaited novel is an epic mystical drama of a young woman's sudden sainthood in late 19th-century Mexico. It is 1889, and the civil war is brewing in Mexico. Sixteen year old Teresita, illegitimate but beloved daughter of the wealthy and powerful rancher Don Tomas Urrea, wakes from the strangest dream - a dream that she has died. Only it was not a dream. This passionate and rebellious young woman has arisen from the dead with the power to heal - but it will take all her faith to endure the trials that await her and her family now that she has become the Saint of Cabora. The Hummingbird's Daughter is a vast, hugely satisfying novel of love and loss, joy and pain. Two decades in the writing, this is the masterpiece that Luis Alberto Urrea has been building up to.

Nineteen-year-old Nayeli works at a taco shop in her Mexican village and dreams about her father, who journeyed to the United States to find work. Recently, it has dawned on her that he isn't the only man who has left town. In fact, there are almost no men in the village--they've all gone north. While watching The Magnificent Seven, Nayeli decides to go north herself and recruit seven men--her own "Siete Magníficos"--to repopulate her hometown and protect it from the bandidos who plan on taking it over. Filled with unforgettable characters and prose as radiant as the Sinaloan sun, Into the Beautiful North is the story of an irresistible young woman's quest to find herself on both sides of the fence.

Патриарх мексиканского семейства Мигель Анхель де ла Круз, которого все называют Старший Ангел, собрал весь клан на вечеринку по случаю своего дня рождения. Старший Ангел болен и уверен, что это его последний праздник, а потому повеселиться надо на славу. Но накануне вечеринки мать патриарха, столетняя Мама Америка, решает, что достаточно пожила на свете, и уже не разобрать, празднуется ли день рождения или же происходят поминки. Впрочем, повеселиться можно всегда. На праздник стекаются все родственники, в том числе и Младший Ангел, сводный брат Старшего Ангела, гринго и изгой. Два сладко-горьких дня празднующие под шелест пальм смеются, плачут, открывают секреты, признаются в любви, просят прощения и прощают. И конечно, рассказывают друг другу невероятные семейные истории, больше похожие на сказки. Трогательный, хулиганский, остроумный, экзотичный, жизнерадостный и щемящий роман о времени и семье, о грехах и искуплениях, о верности и слабости, о бегствах и возвращениях. Луис Альберто Урреа - гениальный летописец того заполошного, запутанного, зачастую неприличного хаоса, который принято называть "семьей". "Дом падших ангелов" - умопомрачительная по насыщенности книга, которая охватывает собой все эмоции и хаотические сплетения большой семьи.