Review of Into The Beautiful North by Luis Alberto Urrea

There are still many places in the world where electricity is a luxury and bandidos regularly assert power over powerless villages, where a plate of beans has to suffice as daily bread, and the lure of Hollywood cowboys and television heroes encourages the imagination to believe in fantasies. Escapism is a form of hope. The men of Tres Camarones, the dusty pueblito in Sinaloa, Mexico, at the center of Luis Alberto Urrea’s new novel, Into the Beautiful North, have escaped to the U.S. The fantasy was, the men cross the border, acquire riches, and return to the land of lagoons and mangrove swamps to spread the wealth. But after braving the dangerous, illegal crossing and vanishing into the empty expanses and hyped-up culture of \u27Los Yuinaites,\u27 it is the rare man who comes back home