Ok, I have to start by saying this is definitely one of my favorite reads for this year! What a beautifully-written book it is...Nineteen-year-old Nayeli has an idyllic life in her little village of Tres Camarones in Mexico - she works at a taco shop, whiles away her time with her girlfriends, and daydreams about the things 19-year-olds daydream about.
One day she realizes that there are no men left in her village, except for the old, or the really young. All the in-between-ers have left, to go up north to Los Yunaites - including her father. And when the bandidos come scoping out her little town, there are no men left to protect it.
So Nayeli does what any smart nineteen-year-old girl does. *grin* She organizes a "search party" to go up north to bring home their men. What spunk! How daring! And so starts the journey of four young people heading north, for no reason that other immigrants - legal or illegal - try to cross the border for.
Into the Beautiful North is lyrical and mesmerizing in its storytelling. From the squalid conditions in Tijuana, the criminal elements preying on the unsuspecting, the people they meet when at the bottom, the people who help them attempt the border crossing... I could not put the book down at all. One of my favorite passages has to be when Nayeli is caught by the Border Patrol, and she tells her story but they can't believe it, it's so incredible. Go read it for yourself - it's out May 19th, and you can pre-order from Amazon by clicking on the cover.
Title: Into the Beautiful North
Author: Luis Alberto Urrea
ISBN-10: 0-316-02527-5
ISBN-13: 978-0-316-02527-0
Paperback: 334 pages (ARC)
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, May 2009
