ANGELS IN AMERICA
BIG ANGEL—PATRIARCH of the De La Cruz clan, “El Jefe” emblazoned on his coffee mug, a man who once “could make the walls crack with his voice”—is dying of cancer. Relegated to a wheelchair, he realizes that “somebody was going to have to put his shoes on him. Infuriating.” So begins The House of Broken Angels, Luis Alberto Urrea’s rollicking portrait of a Mexican American family as its four generations gather in San Diego for Big Angel’s last birthday. The author of eight novels, four poetry volumes, and five nonfiction titles (including 2005 Pulitzer finalist The Devil’s Highway), Urrea grew up reading immigrant sagas but never came across one in which he recognized himself. So he set out to craft an American tale whose characters “happen to speak Spanish and admire the
