Into the Beautiful North

Synopsis

The town of Tres Camarones is accosted by bandidos at a time when most of the men in the town have gone to America to look for work. After watching The Magnificent Seven, Nayeli, a nineteen year old girl, decides to travel to America to convince seven of the town's best fighters to come back and fight the bandidos

Nayeli and her three friends Yolo, Vampi and Tacho, begin their journey with the financial support of her aunt Tia Irma, the mayor of the town. Along the way they lose their luggage and a good deal of their money. In Tijuana, a garbage picker and skilled fighter named Atomiko helps them across the border. Once across, Nayeli seeks out the assistance of Matt, a missionary who had come to their town three years in the past and left her his phone number. They find two more warriors in a migrant worker camp.

Tia Irma takes a plane to San Diego to meet up with them, and while she continues searching for four more candidates to bring back to Mexico, Nayeli and Tacho leave for Kankakee, Illinois to look for Nayeli's father, a former policeman. However, they find that her father has a new family, and she leaves without speaking to him. Meanwhile, Tia Irma has rounded up twenty-seven fighters.

The story ends as a boy on the roof of Nayeli's taco shop shouts that he sees her in the distance with an army behind her.

Reception

A review in SF Gate compares the plot and writing style unfavorably with Urrea's earlier novel, and a Kirkus review of the book criticized the ending, and the book overall as not the author's best work. Bookpage was more positive, calling the book "thoroughly enjoyable", and Publishers Weekly extols its colorful characters and humor.

The book was selected by the UC Santa Barbara Library as its 2017 book for the university-wide reading program "UCSB Reads".