Luis Alberto Urrea, whose name has the lofty ring of an artist you think you know but you can't place, and who has quietly built the kind of reputation that validates such feelings, is about to become, finally, arguably, after decades of books and trails of critical hosannas, a major figure. As in, a household name. That arguable part? It comes not so much from those already reading Urrea and more from the man himself: He looked into the bookshelves of his Naperville, Ill., home and said that his new book, "The House of Broken Angels," a multi-generational saga about a Mexican-American family quite similar to his own, was his go-for-broke attempt to stand alongside his heroes. He nodded at Twain, he mumbled Steinbeck (whose work his veers closer to), then said that he would likely fail, but he wanted, for a moment, "to just exist in that same arena."
Which sounded disingenuous, considering the collection of literary awards, the stately pyramids and globes and large heavy medals, residing behind glass in the next room.
Still, if any author looks due for next level-dom, it's Urrea.
When John Alba Cutler started teaching Latino literature at Northwestern University 10 years ago, his classes were full of students who hadn't actually read much Latino literature. "I would maybe get a student who read 'House on Mango Street' and that was it for familiarity with Latino literature," he said. "Now the majority have read Sandra Cisneros, Junot Diaz, Luis Urrea. They've laid groundwork. And Urrea, he's crossing over with a wider appeal, outside Latino classrooms. There's a proliferation of fiction about the U.S.-Mexico border, but he sits at the top."
The problem is, where do you begin with this guy?
With the sprawling historical fiction? Or the journalism, poetry, memoirs? The ballet? Worse, in telling Urrea's own story, where do you start? And stop? A day earlier, in a studio at WBEZ-FM on Navy Pier, Urrea was taping the NPR show "Fresh Air," and host Terry Gross, whose cool, soft voice came through headphones from her studio in Philadelphia, sounded exasperated with their limited time. They had talked for 90 minutes (which would be edited later into an hourlong interview) and the moment they were finished, off the air, Gross blurted: "Oh, your life has just been too eventful!"
Urrea, 62, rocked backward in his chair, delighted.
Indeed, the story of Luis Alberto Urrea itself has a whiff of folk tale. He is a lot like his best-sellers, an epic mix of ancient and contemporary, a touch of magic realism here, a chunk of painful reality there, yet approachable, warm, not prone to literary pretense. (The Chinese-American family novels of Amy Tan, a friend of Urrea, is a fair approximation.) His Mexico, similarly, is not the monolith of political rhetoric, but generationally and ethnically diverse. Urrea himself has blond hair, blue eyes _ his grandmother was named Guadalupe Murray. He speaks in conspiratorial tones, as if _ despite a story crammed with incident and anecdote _ there is always more left unsaid.
With good reason, his first books, which he has called "The Border Trilogy," were memoirs, stories of his own life growing up on the border. There is too much history here, funny, scary, random: His father, beloved in the Mexican government, had the license plate "MEXICO 2." As a child, Urrea had teeth drilled without Novocaine as a dentist swore in his face. He once took science fiction legend Ursula K. Le Guin to see "Star Wars." He had an aunt who became the national bowling champion of Mexico. He cleaned toilets for a living, made doughnuts, was a cartoonist for a nudie rag.
And on and on.
A friend of Urrea calls him "The Stuffer." Even success arrives in a pig pile. Walking to their car after the "Fresh Air" interview, his wife, Cindy, an investigative journalist, turned to Urrea: "The thing is, you wait your whole life for the kind of attention you're getting now, for everything to happen, and everything happens at once, in a mad rush." Urrea sighed. Once in the car, he perked up: Their oldest child was leaving for college soon!
Cindy: "Nothing ties us to Naperville!"
Urrea: "We're free!"
Then, like that final scene in "The Graduate," after Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross escape a wedding only to find themselves in the back of a silent bus, exhilaration faded back to reality. The car went quiet. Interview requests were piling up, a long book tour was starting. It had been the second time in as many days Urrea taped an NPR show. TNT was developing a TV series based on his 2009 novel "Into the Beautiful North," about a Mexican woman, inspired by "The Magnificent Seven," who sets out to protect her village from banditos; the book itself, selected in 2016 by the National Endowment for the Arts as its nationwide Big Read, already kept Urrea on an never-ending tour. And now the publisher Little, Brown was throwing its marketing weight behind "House of Broken Angels."
"It's dizzying," Urrea said.
Even as they arrived earlier that day at WBEZ, the room already buzzed. Cindy, who acts as a kind of de facto manager/researcher for her husband, was steamed at the New York Times: Urrea had written an op-ed about the wall that President Donald Trump wants to build, now weeks later, "now, suddenly, as he's about to go on Terry Gross, they need changes, and links to sources, right now, right now, and sorry but no _ not right now."
Urrea just smiled.
He soaked in the hubbub. He settled into a chair at the soundboard, and when Gross came on, he brightened. He thanked her (off the air) for buying him a beach house _ a "Fresh Air" interview is a publishing Holy Grail. Gross said if she asked anything too personal, let her know; but it's all in his books already. She said if he made a mistake, start again; yet he's so used to telling his story, he never fumbled.
Midway through the chat, Gross herself stopped: There was a wind tunnel in her studio, and a door swung open _ hold a second. Headphones went silent as she shut the door.
Urrea leaned back.
"The ghosts of my ancestors," he said.
