The House of Broken Angels

The patriarch of a Mexican family, Miguel Ángel de la Cruz—everyone calls him the Elder Angel—gathered the whole clan for a party to celebrate his birthday. The Elder Angel is sick and is sure it will be his last holiday, so the family should celebrate in style.

But the day before the party, the patriarch’s mother, century-old Mama America, decides she has lived long enough, and it’s already hard to tell whether they are celebrating a birthday or observing a wake.

However, it’s always possible to have fun. On the holiday, all relatives flock in—including the Younger Angel, the stepbrother of the Elder Angel, a gringo and an outcast. Two bittersweet days of celebrating under the rustling of palm trees: they laugh, cry, trade secrets, confess love, ask forgiveness and forgive. And of course, they tell each other incredible family stories—more like fairy tales.

A touching, hooligan, witty, exotic, cheerful, and aching novel about time and family, about sins and redemption, about loyalty and weakness, about escapes and returns. Luis Alberto Urréa is a brilliant chronicler of that frantic, tangled, often improper chaos that people call “family.” “The House of Fallen Angels” is a mind-bogglingly saturated book that embraces all the emotions and chaotic entanglements of a large family.