Immigrants’ tale a story of family

There’s a feeling when you are out of town in some strange, fascinating, bustling city, and you don’t know quite where to look because you are pleasantly overpowered by the barrage of new sights and sounds.

That’s what it feels like to read Luis Alberto Urrea’s “The House of Broken Angels,” a sprawling yet intimate tale of the de la Cruzes, a multigenerational Mexican-American family.

Taking place over two days in San Diego (although flashbacks float us to Tijuana, Mexico, and La Paz, Bolivia, and beyond), the novel has two key characters: Big Angel, who is facing what he knows will be his final birthday party (his 70th; he has terminal cancer) on what turns out to be the day after his mother’s funeral; and his muchyounger half brother, Little Angel, an English teacher who years ago had “gone off to Seattle and lived in the rain.”

Little Angel is back for a wary reunion, never quite sure of his place.

Through them, we meet countless other de la Cruzes, and I wished Urrea had included a family tree; it wasn’t always easy to keep track of how each character fits in. But in some ways, the confusion feels right; the book, with two crowded central events, feels gloriously populated. The reader becomes a guest at the • “The House of Broken Angels” (Little, Brown; 326 pages; $27) by Luis Alberto Urrea

funeral and the birthday party, meeting and greeting; slowly piecing together the story of a family, with its joys and its tragedies.

Urrea’s book, rich in detail and images, has much to say about the immigrant experience; about how language becomes both a barrier and a bond; and how a family defines home.

But it’s especially moving as an end-of-life portrait, as Big Angel tries to take in every detail of days that are slipping away.

Trying to thank his daughter for a moving birthday surprise, Big Angel struggles for the right phrases but hits on a gentle truth; one of the book’s many gifts.

“He wanted to leave her with a blessing, with beautiful words to sum up a life, but there were no words sufficient to this day. But still, he tried. ‘All we do, mija,’ he said, ‘is love. Love is the answer. Nothing stops it. Not borders. Not death.’”