"In Urrea's exuberant new novel of Mexican-American life, 70-year-old patriarch Big Angel de la Cruz is dying, and he wants to have one last birthday blowout. Unfortunately, his 100-year-old mother, America, dies the week of his party, so funeral and birthday are celebrated one day apart. The entire contentious, riotous de la Cruz clan descends on San Diego for the events--"High rollers and college students, prison veternaos and welfare mothers, happy...

This hard-hitting, beautiful short story collection from one of America's preeminent literary voices “reflect[s] both sides of his Mexican-American heritage while stretching the reader's understanding of human boundaries” (Kirkus).
Examining the borders between one nation and another, between one person and another, Urrea reveals his mastery of the short form. This collection includes the Edgar-award winning...

Nineteen-year-old Nayeli works at a taco shop in her Mexican village and dreams about her father, who left the family to work in the United States. 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 Magnificos"---to repopulate

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A historical novel about the author's great-aunt Teresita, the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy Mexican rancher, who, after being raped and apparently killed at the age of sixteen, rises from the dead with the power to heal others, causing uproar among the church's and the government's most powerful as the country inches toward revolution.