Into the Beautiful North by Luis Alberto Urrea on audio was a delight, especially with the voice and passion of Susan Ericksen. Nayeli is a young girl working in a taco shop in Tres Camarones, who continues to idolize her father that left her and her mother many years ago.

Her home is under attack from bandits and drug dealers, but many residents have been abandoned by other men seeking the opportunities found in America. While watching The Magnificent Seven with Yul Brynner, Nayeli and her friends -- Tacho, Yolo, and Vampi -- decide they are going to make a trek to America to bring back the seven they need to save their town.

The audio brings to life the accents, the culture, the beauty of each scene and the playful sparring between these characters and their new surroundings. Ericksen's passion for these characters and this story is clear, illuminating the innocence of Nayeli and her friends and the hardships they face.

From the colorful personalities of Nayeli's gay boss, Tacho, to her vampire/Goth girlfriend Vampi and perky and whiny Yolo to the matriarch of the village Nayeli's Aunt Irma, Urrea paints a mosaic of Mexico and the struggles of illegal immigrants and those seeking a better life. Readers will by far enjoy the quirky Atomico a warrior from the dump outside Tijuana the most as he seeks to defend the four from the ills of the world.

My husband and I were riveted when the audio rolled us to work every morning. Atomico was my husband's favorite character because he was like a comic book character; "I AM ATOMICO." While the border crossings were the most exciting aspects of the novel for my husband, the end of the novel fell flat; he considered it an open ending as if there were more to come -- that the journey had not ended. Urrea's writing is passionate and tangible, capturing the reader instantly and weaving a tale that envelops them completely.

Into the Beautiful North is one of the best novels I've read in 2009, but I plan to read this in hard copy as well. ( )

I just finished reading this book today and have to say I enjoyed it more as I read further into the book. When I first started reading the book, I kept putting it down, however at a certain point, I kept going. This is a good book for a weekend read. I liked the characters and storyline. ( )

Nayeli is young, beautiful, and fascinated with the Beautiful North; i.e., the U.S. Her father left to find work in Illinois. Most of the village men also went north looking for a better life for their families. Nayeli fears for the safety of her small Mexican village and, along with her home-girls and their gay friend, travels north looking for seven courageous men (as in The Magnificent Seven) to protect the village. Despite this somewhat imprudent premise, there is a lot of drama involved in the border crossing(s) and Nayleli's cross-country trip in search of her father. Urrea's latest effort was interesting, but not in the same caliber as The Hummingbird's Daughter, lacking its scope, passion, and historical detail. ( )

Bueno! Este libro es muy hard core! This is a great read. You won't want to put it down. The characters that Alberto Urrea develops are well done and hilarious and human. Brings a wider world view to the border issue than one gets from the American media. ( )

Nineteen-year-old Nayeli and her friends come to the realization that there are no men left in their small, poor Mexican village. All of the able-bodied males have gone north to the USA to try to earn money. Bandits come to town and there is no one left to protect the women and children left there. Nayeli and 3 friends decide to go on a mission: Go to the USA and bring back seven men (this, after seeing the movie, The Magnificent Seven) to save the town. Witty and peopled with colorful characters, Into the Beautiful North is an irresistible gem of a book. ( )

Into the Beautiful North by Luis Alberto Urrea

Nineteen-year-old Nayeli lives in a Mexican village bereft of men. They have all gone north into America to find jobs, even her father. After watching The Magnificent Seven at her local decrepit theater, she vows to cross the border and bring back seven men to help repopulate her village and ward off the invading nasty drug dealers. On her quest for warriors and her father, Nayeli enlists the aid of her girl posse and the local gay restaurant owner. This colorful rag-tag group travels north, encountering other truly memorable characters along the way. Filled with humor and beauty, this book explores the difficult life of some Mexicans and immigrants in the US. This book is funny, joyful and powerful, with some of my favorite characters ever. Not all the threads are neatly/happily tied up in the end, which is perhaps why I found it so satisfying. Four 1/2 stars. ( )

Into the Beautiful North
by Luis Alberto Urrea
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
May 2009

This book was deliciously lyrical and why would you expect anything less than this from the author of the widely acclaimed novel The Hummingbird's Daughter and 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist for nonfiction for The Devil's Highway. Mr. Urrea has outdone himself this time writing about Nayeli, the wonderful heroine who sets out on a monumental quest from her small southern Mexican town to America. Humor is woven from start to finish into a rather harrowing and realistic journey through the rugged and dangerous countryside of Mexico to Tijuana, Mexico from where illegal passage into the U.S. is planned. I was reminded of Don Quixote and longed for the success of the adventure of Nayeli and her unique companions. Once they reach Tijuana, the author's deep knowledge and love for Tijuana comes through vibrantly. One of the most fascinating depictions is life in the Tijuana dump. The squalor of living conditions is truly harrowing but is balanced by the beauty of human resilience and joy for life of the dump inhabitants. This is not the story of a group of people seeking and finding the holy grail in America. It is rather the poignant story of a person's quest to do something for the greater good of her beloved community and coming to America temporarily to achieve that and return to her beloved country. ( )

A delightful novel full of humor, poignancy, and inspiration. The characters are memorable. Nayeli, the heroine, conceives a quest to save her peaceful village from bad guys after viewing the film, "The Magnificent Seven". And off she goes. The story is something of a rite of passage tale, as the characters discover new strengths within themselves while simultaneously losing their innocence. You will love "The Warrior", Tia Irma, and the couple who live in a shack in the dump, but grow roses in their yard. You will laugh and cringe. You will root for the good guys and despise the bad guys. It is an epic tale in contemporary form. Thoroughly enjoyed the book. ( )

Into The Beautiful North
Luis Alberto Urrea

In the tiny Mexican village of Tres Camarones (3 Shrimp) in Sinaloa, 19 year old Nayeli and her two friends, Yolo and Vampi, along with the gay owner of a taco stand, Tacho, are inspired by the Yul Brunner film, the Magnifient Seven, to go to Los Yunaites (the United States) to seek replacements for the men who have left the village. Traficantes (drug dealers) have discovered Tres Camarones and the women, led by their intrepid mayor, Irma (Nayeli’s aunt) don’t feel capable of handling the situation alone; they need ex-cops and ex-soldiers to combat the threat. The young women feel the lack of suitors. In addition, Nayeli harbors the not-so-secret hope of finding her father, who sent her a postcard years ago from Kankakee, Illinois but from whom she has not heard since. The four, each with his or her own fantasies of what the US is really like, set out on an epic journey, completely innocent of what they will encounter along the way.

What they encounter (and whom) and how they deal with it is mostly hilarious, at times serious, and always fascinating. The scenes in Tres Camarones are at times hysterically funny. There is one episode where Aunt Irma and Nayeli go shopping at a market that had me laughing out loud; it is a brilliant satire on US immigration policy (any more would be an unforgivable spoiler).

The sections on Tijuana and crossing the border are far from amusing, and show, actually, the easier aspects of illegal entry. The reactions of the four on what they find in the US and to US culture are wonderful, seen from the point of view of Innocents Abroad.

But truly best of all are the characterizations. Aunt Irma is a force of nature. The girls are themselves, and well done, as is Tacho. But my favorite of all is Atómiko; like tha author, I just wish he were real!

The only drawback to the book is that is is liberally sprinkled with Spanish idioms and Mexican street slang, which are almost always either translated or made clear (or you can make a very good guess!). A few times, they aren’t. But that is almost trivial in a book that is so well written, with such great humor and imagination.

Not to be missed! ( )

Thanks to the flood of illegal immigrants into the US, small towns in Mexico are left with a lack of young men. For Nayeli and her friends Yolo and Vampi, this is a serious problem, especially when banditos arrive in the town to scare the women. After watching the film The Magnificent Seven, Nayeli decides that she is going to go to the US, into the beautiful north, to find seven men to protect her town and revitalize the lives of the women therein. Armed with cash, a pretty smile, and three friends, Nayeli heads off on a bus into a journey neither she nor I would have imagined.

With a few notable exceptions, novels set in Latin America tend to frustrate me. Largely, this is because of the magical realism that many of those authors employ. In general, I prefer novels to be either all fantasy or all real, but magical realism treads an uneasy line between the two, and for some reason I just don’t like it. So when my online book club chose this novel for June, I wasn’t really sure what I was going to think of it. In the end, I ended up on the edge myself between enjoying it and finding myself dissatisfied with it.

There are many things to enjoy in this novel. Urrea’s writing is beautiful and evoked perfectly for me small-town Mexico, a garbage dump on the edge of the border, and American cities that I’ve never been to. I was really moved by how difficult life is for illegal immigrants and how cruel the Border Patrol is towards them. I’m not very comfortable with our stance towards illegal immigrants, although I don’t know how to fix it, so the struggles portrayed in the book really made me think about the problem. It was interesting to see how in different locations, Mexicans are treated differently. Lastly, there isn’t really much of that magical realism in this book. Slightly unrealistic situations are portrayed but nothing that is actually impossible. It still has a bit of that feel to it, but overall I was happy about this absence.

On the other hand, certain things bothered me about the book. Nayeli’s journey seemed a little outrageous, especially given that the only threat was two men who refused to pay for their food. We know that they are banditos because we are told, but they did not seem to be terrifying. Other events in this book follow a similar unlikely pattern. Some of the passages in the book are in Spanish, which I don’t speak, although I mostly skimmed them and tried to get the jist of the conversation. Perhaps more fatally, I didn’t really understand or like many of the characters or their motivations. I came closest to liking Nayeli, but then towards the end of the book she has an experience and reacts in a way that saddened me; I felt that for her, the journey was not fulfilling. The secondary characters often irritated me; Nayeli’s friends are largely caricatures and it’s hard to feel that we know anything about them outside of their shell. Even the missionary, Matt, was unappealing once we met him and seemed at total odds with the man all the girls had fallen in love with.

Despite all that, I did enjoy it. I read it in a few hours between errands and never felt bored or that I wished I’d brought another book. It was only afterwards that I began to feel uncertain about it and think through everything that I have mentioned. I would still recommend it, especially if you like novels by other Latin American writers like Gabriel García Márquez.

Our book club discussion was really interesting. More of us than I had expected felt lukewarm about the book; they didn’t like it, or they were like me and liked it but had some problems with it overall. We were all most moved by the issue of illegal immigrants as portrayed by the book; some of us had heard about the garbage dumps and some of us had not. A few of us were stymied by the way that people were able to recognize them as illegals; there are plenty of Latin Americans here legally and there is no real way to tell the difference. We had a great discussion about it and I suspect other book clubs would too.

http://chikune.com/blog/?p=1206 ( )

I read and loved Urrea's book The Hummingbirds Daughter. Because of this I did not hesitate to buy Beautiful North, without a second thought. I was then a little afraid to read it, thinking it might be disappointing to me. I shouldn't have worried.

Nayeli is a young girl from a Mexican village. One day, she realizes that the men in her village have slowly drifted away. They have nearly all gone north, into the United States. Most of them, including her father, have eventually simply disappeared.

Nayeli is from a family of strong positive women. In fact, the small village has several strong woman, and some of the young ones decide to go on a mission. They are going to go north and find men. They want to bring back seven good, strong, brave men to their village. It isn't safe to live in a place with not enough men, they decide.

This is the story of their mission. The people they meet and the way that they themselves grow and change. They learned a lot along the way and found themselves in some very difficult situations. This is about taking the road from childhood to adulthood, and about loyalty strength and family.

Recommended ( )

The Review

Luis Alberto Urrea is, without a doubt, a very talented writer. He has won a multitude of awards and has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist (2005). Although I was unfamiliar with his past works, there was something about this story that intrigued me.

I’ll start by sharing that I wish I was more fluent in Spanish than I currently am. this book had quite a bit of Spanish conversation in it. Some of it I got, others not so much. But, the language didn’t prevent me from understanding the story and what the characters were experiencing. The overall Spanish language of the book somewhat reminded me of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. However, this story is much different. As aforementioned, this is a story of a woman from a small seaside town in Mexico who is on a mission to change her town. All of the men had left the town for work and many of them immigrated to the United States of America. With nearly all of the men gone, the city had no protection, limited commerce, and a dwindling population. The women of Tres Camarones wanted their men back!

The novel maintains several colorful characters whose lives you observe during this mission to bring the Mexican men back from America. There is a major component of this story in which the reader observes the attempts at border crossing into the U.S. This part of the story invoked many emotions within me… some my personal opinions regarding illegal immigration and others sympathizing with the characters on their journey. It was interesting to read about the botched attempts as well as the successful ones. Further, viewing the American lifestyle from the viewpoint of the neighboring immigrant was very intriguing.

I “Heart” Mexico!

I am a huge lover of Mexico! I used to travel there 3 times a year (Rosarito & Ensenada, Baja California). Rosarito is my absolute favorite 4-day getaway (except for the border at re-entry… talk about traffic!). I have my much loved taco stands (oh, my precious barbacoa), bars, and shops… not to mention my favorite beachside motel. I love everything about Mexico, except maybe my reaction to the water that I’m not supposed to drink (and try not to, but there’s ice!). The pear juice-water in Mexico is to die for… not to mention the creamy milk and cheese! There is fantastic almond-flavored tequilla and their beer is magnifico! But, since my ex-boyfriend and I broke up, I haven’t been. I don’t want to go down there without a larger group AND male protection. Things at the border and just south of it have gotten so bad. In fact, there are kidnappings and all kinds of crazy things that weren’t usually an issue. And, now I can imagine my readers thinking, “… and the Swine Flu!” I miss Mexico and this book just made me long for it!

Living in Southern California, there is a high Hispanic population and many have immigrated from Mexico. So, Cinco de Mayo is hugely celebrated in my area… and, I’m celebrating right along there with them! We go to Mario’s and I have my fill of strawberry margaritas and seafood. But, it’s nothing like “Lobster Village” in Mexico at sunset with a “Coco-Loco” in hand.

On Sher’s “Out of Ten Scale:”

This book is truly unique. It’s not like many others that I’ve read in the past year. I think that I had an affinity with this novel because of my love for Mexico and familiarity with the landscape in which it was described. I’ve often wished that I possessed enough money to invest in a house or trailer down there for my early retirement years. It’s just so relaxing and close to home. For me, this book was enjoyable and I would recommend it. It would DEFINITELY make for good BOOK CLUB discussion! ( )

Nayeli and her friends live in Tres Camarones, a small Mexican village where very few men are left. The rest of the men have gone north in search of money or jobs, and now the village is being taken over by bandidos. Nayeli and friends head north to gather a group of men to bring back to their village and save it from the bandidos.

I enjoyed the first 200 pages of this book and then it tapered off for me a little. It lost a bit of its charm once the crew crosses the border, for me at least. It seemed that perhaps the author didn't know exactly what to do for the ending, so he just quickly wrapped it up without giving us much explanation that I would have appreciated. The characters are good and interesting and for the most part I enjoyed this book. ( )

Into the Beautiful North opens in Tres Camarones, a dying Mexican village. Most of the men have left to pursue work elsewhere -- including 19-year-old Nayeli’s father, who disappeared long ago to Kankakee, near Chicago in the United States. Now, prompted by bandits who increasingly target her village and by the film, The Magnificent Seven, Nayeli organizes two girlfriends and her gay taco-shop boss on a quest to cross the border into the US and round up some virile men -- maybe even her father? -- to bring back to defend -- and re-populate :) -- the town.

The early chapters are an engaging and funny introduction to the village and its likeable residents. A sense of magic and a sprinkling of Spanish evoke Mexico, accompanied by brutal depictions of poverty and lawlessness and intriguing perspectives on US culture. About a third in, the narrative turns somewhat skeletal, as though the novel has been sketched but not fully written. About two-thirds in, the quest turns into a road-trip travelogue that continues until the characters are “weeping with boredom and despair” -- and so was I, a little bit :) Still, now that I’ve seen how beautifully and light-heartedly Urrea can write, I'm eager to read The Hummingbird’s Daughter. ( )

In a small coastal town in Mexico, the men have gone missing. Year after year, more and more fathers and sons from Tres Camarones journey north to the other side of the American border, looking for the paradigm of occupational success. The problem is, they never return.

This has not gone unnoticed by the remaining occupants of the town, nor by a circling pack of drug dealers, sensing the town’s weakening staff. Fearing the town’s impending collapse if it remains devoid of testosterone, nineteen-year-old Nayeli and her three friends, Tacho, Vampi and Yolo put their heads together to come up with a solution.

Their only plan is to venture north as their fathers have done, this time with the hopes of returning with their wayward men and perhaps a few additional applicants. Dreaming the impossible dream, Nayeli and an accumulated band of misfits embark on an unforgettable journey into the great unknown to bring back that which will save the fate of their small town.

Sitting down to review Into the Beautiful North is a little bit like picking up pictures from the developer after an exotic vacation; the retelling simply cannot do the original justice. Luis Alberto Urrea weaves a beautiful, if heartbreaking story, crisscrossing the blurred borderline in an unconventional way.

Urrea does a fantastic job of painting characters, on both sides of the border, as realistically flawed with mostly good intentions. It is impossible not to fall in love with each member of the group as even the scruffiest of the wayward pack are painted as endearing, despite their transgressions. I will say, though, that while the women are portrayed in a positive light, as strong yet vulnerable, they are not as fleshed out as the men. Perhaps that was the intention, as the story centers on recapturing the masculinity that the village has lost.

I enjoyed taking a tour of my own country through the eyes of the Tres Camarones crew even if, or perhaps because, it was not always rosy. I also appreciated a different approach to the old border buzz. We hear such a continuous stream of crossing controversy from the news media that this refreshing angle served to reignite my interest in the topic.

Into the Beautiful North is, altogether, a fantastic adventure story that reads smoothly throughout and I thoroughly recommend it. ( )

In northern Mexico, the notorious girlfriends of the dusty, dying town of Tres Camarones work a variety of part-time jobs so they can buy clothes and makeup and go to the movies. After celebrating Tia Irma's victory as the town's first woman mayor, Nayeli realizes that the only close male companionship she, Yolo, and Vampi have is Tacho, the gay owner of the so-called Internet café. The men have all gone to that paradise known as the United States.

How will the town protect itself? And how can the young women date and marry? Nayeli decides to follow the example provided by the movie The Magnificent Seven, starring Mexico's favorite actor, Yul Brynner. She will go to America and bring back seven of her countrymen to protect the town and revive the population. And while she's there, she will find her father and bring him back home.

When Yolo, Vampi, Tacho, and Nayeli leave their familiar Tres Camarones, they are ill-equipped and unprepared to survive Mexico, let alone to cross the border and find help.

From the nightmarish bus trip through Mexico to the bittersweet drive across America, Urrea's skill as a storyteller shines, especially when he focuses on the spunky Nayeli. The plight of the truly poor who live in the towns just south of the border was heartbreakingly portrayed. And it was particularly interesting to see the people, culture, and geography of the States through the eyes of a new arrival.

Unfortunately, the circumstances that motivated the friends to set off on their desperate quest are underdeveloped and thus it was difficult to buy the premise. Some of the side stories lacked sufficient depth and became tangents rather than additions to Nayeli's journey. There was quite a bit of Spanish in the book, and readers unfamiliar with the language may not fully understand several passages. And, finally, the climax of Nayeli's cross-country trip was a letdown, either as a result of her choices or because her reactions were left to the reader's imagination, or perhaps a bit of both.

There is, however, a lot to like about Into the Beautiful North. Nayeli and Tacho were sympathetic characters, and Nayeli's intelligence, bravery, and determination were admirable. Although parts of the book focused on the difficult and sometimes horrific conditions for a particular segment of the Mexican population, the novel is not without humor, and this is another of Urrea's strengths.

Despite the flaws of Into the Beautiful North, I was not disappointed in Urrea as an author. He has written several other books—both fiction and nonfiction—as well as three collections of poetry. I recommend exploring this author's works.

Luis Alberto Urrea has a website where you can learn more about his books and watch a moving video about Into the Beautiful North. ( )

Nayeli and her friends Yolo and Vampi seem to be the only young people left in their small village, Tres Camarones, Mexico. All of the men have gone north (to the United States) to earn a living, so there’s no one left to protect the village from bandidos. While Nayeli and her friends are out crabbing one day, she realizes there are no babies in the village either. While watching The Magnificent Seven, Nayeli becomes inspired to head north to recruit seven men to return to Tres Camarones to defend the village.

Nayeli heads out with Yolo, Vampi and Tacho, the owner of a local cafe. They leave with the well wishes and money of most of the villagers. (Nayeli also has a personal mission she wants to fulfill – she wants to find her father who is in Kankakee, Illinois.) They face some difficulties crossing the border and seek out Matt, a young American who had visited their village as a missionary a few years before. Matt is willing to help them and when word gets out that they’re seeking men to return to their village, the response is overwhelming.

I loved Into the Beautiful North by Luis Alberto Urrea and am afraid my review won’t do it justice. It’s a story of strength and determination and the love of a culture and village. It’s the story of immigrants, but not in the traditional sense of the word. I loved the character of Nayeli – she was strong physically and mentally and a true leader. I was appalled to read about the way some people have to live just across the border in Mexico. I loved reading about the United States from the eyes of someone from another culture. When Nayeli and her friends descend on Matt, he’s ready to apologize because his mother’s apartment is not very nice, but he comes to realize they think it’s luxurious. I cringed at the way some of the Americans treated the group from Tres Camarones and was proud of the way others responded. This book is beautifully written and will certainly make you reflect on your views of immigration. ( )

Very readable - good to read about other cultures - makes you appreciate home. If Ugly Betty were to gather up a couple of friends and try to cross the Mexican border , we might get something close to this story. ( )

The story is about Nayeli, who is 19 years old and working in a taco shop in what would conventionally be referred to as a "sleepy Mexican village." Bandidos or drug dealers, have appeared and are threatening their way of life and there is a shortage of men left in town to defend the women, children and old people from them.

After watching The Magnificent Seven at the local cinema, Nayeli has the solution to the towns problems. She decides to go to the United States and find seven men to bring back home. A group of 4 begin their adventure. The escapades of these four and the people they meet, who help or hinder them, are alternately hilarious, poignant, scary and sad.

The most interesting twist in the tale is that none of the travelers have any desire to stay in the States. They are all longing to get back home and make their village better. ( )

Nayeli has spent her whole life in Tres Camarones, a small but hardly quiet town in Mexico. Most of the men have left the town to find work in the United States, leaving Tres Camarones with children, old men and women when the drug cartels move in. Nayeli's aunt Irma was just been elected mayor and demanded a Yul Brenner film festival, Tia Irma thinks he is the best Mexican actor of all time. The theater owner, a devoted Steve McQueen fan, shows the movie "The Magnificent Seven" and Nayeli is inspired. She decides to leave her hometown and go to the United States to find seven heroes who she will bring back to defend Tres Camarones from the cartels that are threatening to overrun it, and secretly she hopes to find her father in Kankakee, Il and bring him home to her mother.Nayeli's friends Yolo, Vampi (so called for her goth fashion) and Tacho (the only gay man in Tres Camarones) set off for Tijuana with little more than the clothes on their backs, and the contributions of the citizens of Tres Camarones.Urrea's story is one that is easy to understand and lacks the usual clichés of other quest stories. The reader immediately loves Nayeli who has her faults (that we can all identify with) but is ultimately optimistic and courageous. All of the characters are easy to love, even the border patrol. I was so worried when each of the travelers tucked away their money that would help get them to the US and back. In any other story they would have lost all of their money and luggage within the first hundred pages; but I was relieved to see that Urrea did not follow that cliché and instead let the story unfold without such a tragedy to push the plot along. The book is a beautiful story, if a little bittersweet and I couldn't help myself from breaking into a big smile at the end of the epilogue. I am anxious to read Urrea's other works and look forward to his next work of fiction. ( )

This is the story of a young woman who goes in search of men as protectors to her village. It was well-written and humourous. The characters were full of life and well-developed and I could connect easily with them. I found the descriptions of life in a Mexican village to be authentic (well, only having visited Mexico once, what I imagine to be authentic). The story is imaginative and easy to read. I recommend it highly. ( )

Luis Alberto Urrea's 'Into the beautiful North' begins in a small fictional seaside town--Tres Camarones in Sinaloa, Mexico . Prospects have been pretty dead there for some time and most of the male residents have left for greener pastures--many of them 'illegals' crossing the United States border. Into town comes some bad actors--drug dealers and corrupt cops and the new mayor Irma (a huge Yul Brynner fan) and her niece Nayeli hatch a plan after seeing the Brynner-Steve McQueen flick 'The magnificent seven' to rid their town of these eveil malefactors. Nayeli along with her boss Tacho--the gay cook at a local diner and her girlfriends Yolo and Vampi will cross over into the United States and recruit seven men (soldiers? ex-cops?) who will come back and rid the town of the vermin. Nayeli is hoping as well to find her father who left the family long ago and who's last known whereabouts was a postcard from Kankakee Illinois.

Anyway they find it harder than they think. Young and naive and lost in Tijuana they are prey to all kinds of people looking to take advantage of them. Their second night there they are befriended by an old couple who take them back to their shack set in the middle of a dump. Here Nayeli meets one Atomiko--kind of the 'king' of the dump but mostly goodhearted though a bit on the eccentric side. Atomiko agrees to help them cross the border but on their first attempt they are caught by the Border Patrol and returned to Tijuana minus Tacho who innocently makes an unfortunate remark that is misheard and he is pounced on as a terrorist. The girls are all upset but a friend of Atomiko is able to get them across the border and into San Diego where later Tacho having been released rejoins them after getting a lucky break of his own. Irma herself shows up in San Diego to help them but she also is looking for a long lost love. She takes over the recruiting and Nayeli and Tacho borrow a van head off for Illinois to find Nayeli's father.

All in all I like the book--it can be a little uneven and it has an open ended conclusion and I'm kind of of the mind that it might of served the book better if he had more of an ending. Urrea has a light conversational often humorous storytelling tone that keeps things moving along fairly briskly and a good and adventurous eye for detail and a broad perspective on how humans of different races, genders, nationalities look at each other. It's not always good and it's not always bad. It struck me that Urrea wanted to say something about how badly people can treat each other for the percieved differences of being out of their 'place'--that people are people and not really so much different from each other and when bigotry appears it is not just confined to one group or to one place--nor is tolerance when it rears its un-ugly head. An idea I have is that Urrea might see himself both as a Mexican citizen and as a United States citizen and he is balancing both worlds. Anyway his book seems to strike a balance between both these North American cultures and for what it's worth I found it pretty entertaining as well. ( )

I loved this book. Nayeli is a fabulous young woman to root for – smart, funny, feisty, and brave. Determined to stop drug lords from moving in on her small town in southern Mexico, 19-year-old Nayeli leads her two girlfriends and her gay boss on a quest to the United States to bring back seven Mexican “warriors” to both protect the town and hopefully repopulate its dwindling male population. (Most of the men of the town, including Nayeli's father, have long since gone north to the U.S. in search of work.)

This is a hard book to categorize – it’s funny, it’s thought-provoking, it’s romantic, it’s adventurous, the list goes on – but a very easy one to recommend. ( )

Into the Beautiful North is funny and painful. Some of it is hard to read. It's about love of all kinds. Nayeli, the heroine, is a wonderful, feisty young woman. Urrea understands and respects women and it shows. He has great compassion for all of the characters in the book. Three young women decide to find men to repopulate their village Tres Camarones (yes, Three Shrimp), when Nayeli realizes all the men are gone. Four friends set out with great innocence, enthusiasm and determination to do something that may or may not even be possible.

Urrea brings the real flavor of a place into being. You feel what it is to be in a small village in Mexico. You feel the heat, and the salt air on your skin.

I don't want to give any spoilers here, you need to discover the book for yourselves, but remember the words "I am Atomiko!"

It's a road trip book, it's a border book, it's a 'buddy' book. It's about the great beauty and pain of Mexico. And the kindness and compassion of some and the cruelty of others. It's about the good and bad of the US, and about surprising kindness and pointless evil. It's about life. But always, it's about love. All the kinds of love that there are. Oh yes, it's about Yul Brynner.

This book would make a wonderful movie, and I'd love to see a sequel. A whole series of books about Nayeli and her friends. I won't tell you what her friends are like, part of the fun is meeting them for the first time. ( )