Into the Beautiful North

You can almost hear the opening theme to the classic American Western THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, the movie that inspires the lovely 19-year-old Nayeli to gather together a ragtag group of friends and set out on a mission. Their goal is to cross the Mexican border into the U.S. and recruit seven men, including her father, to help repopulate her village and save them from evil banditos. Narrator Susan Ericksen ably portrays each heartfelt character and delivers Spanish with confidence and ease. At times heartbreaking, at other times laugh-out-loud funny, this is a gritty and gratifying adventure. R.O. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

January 19, 2009
Nayeli, the Taqueria worker of Urrea's fine new novel (after The Hummingbird's Daughter
), is a young woman in the poor but tight-knit coastal Mexican town of Tres Camarones who spends her days serving tacos and helping her feisty aunt Irma get elected as the town's first female mayor. Abandoned by her father who headed north for work years before, Nayeli is hit with the realization that her hometown is all but abandoned by men, leaving it at the mercy of drug gangsters. So Nayeli hatches an elaborate scheme inspired by The Magnificent Seven
: with three friends, she heads north to find seven Mexican men and smuggle them back into Mexico to protect the town. What she discovers along the way, of course, surprises her. Urrea's poetic sensibility and journalistic eye for detail in painting the Mexican landscape and sociological complexities create vivid, memorable scenes. Though the Spanglish can be tough for the uninitiated to detangle, the colorful characters, strong narrative and humor carry this surprisingly uplifting and very human story.