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The Hummingbird's Daughter
by Luis Alberto Urrea
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About This Book
ISBN13: 9780316745468 
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Powells.com Staff Pick
Beautiful! This immensely enjoyable epic vividly brings to life the wonderful, endearing characters of Don Tomas and Teresita. Don't wait to read this!
Recommended by Adrienne
Synopses & Reviews
Publisher Comments:
The prizewinning writer Luis Alberto Urrea' s long-awaited novel is an epic mystical drama of a young woman's sudden sainthood in late 19th-century Mexico.
It is 1889, and civil war is brewing in Mexico. A 16-year-old girl, Teresita, illegitimate but beloved daughter of the wealthy and powerful rancher Don Tomas Urrea, wakes from the strangest dream — a dream that she has died. Only it was not a dream. This passionate and rebellious young woman has arisen from death with a power to heal — but it will take all her faith to endure the trials that await her and her family now that she has become the "Saint of Cabora."
The Hummingbird's Daughter is a vast, hugely satisfying novel of love and loss, joy and pain. Two decades in the writing, this is the masterpiece that Luis Alberto Urrea has been building up to. Its publication will be a major literary event.
Review:
"'Her powers were growing now, like her body. No one knew where the strange things came from. Some said they sprang up in her after the desert sojourn with Huila. Some said they came from somewhere else, some deep inner landscape no one could touch. That they had been there all along.' Teresita, the real-life 'Saint of Cabora,' was born in 1873 to a 14-year-old Indian girl impregnated by a prosperous rancher near the Mexico-Arizona border. Raised in dire poverty by an abusive aunt, the little girl still learned music and horsemanship and even to read: she was a 'chosen child,' showing such remarkable healing powers that the ranch's medicine woman took her as an apprentice, and the rancher, Don Toms Urrea, took her — barefoot and dirty — into his own household. At 16, Teresita was raped, lapsed into a coma and apparently died. At her wake, though, she sat up in her coffin and declared that it was not for her. Pilgrims came to her by the thousands, even as the Catholic Church denounced her as a heretic; she was also accused of fomenting an Indian uprising against Mexico and, at 19, sentenced to be shot. From this already tumultuous tale of his great-aunt Teresa, American Book Award — winner Urrea (The Devil's Highway) fashions an astonishing novel set against the guerrilla violence of post — Civil War southwestern border disputes and incipient revolution. His brilliant prose is saturated with the cadences and insights of Latin-American magical realism and tempered by his exacting reporter's eye and extensive historical investigation. The book is wildly romantic, sweeping in its effect, employing the techniques of Catholic hagiography, Western fairy tale, Indian legend and everyday family folklore against the gritty historical realities of war, poverty, prejudice, lawlessness, torture and genocide. Urrea effortlessly links Teresita's supernatural calling to the turmoil of the times, concealing substantial intellectual content behind effervescent storytelling and considerable humor. Agent, Sandra Dijkstra. (May 17)" Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
Review:
"The Hummingbird's Daughter breathes with life, populated with multiple, complex and genuinely individual characters.... It is an immensely entertaining work that is intelligently and sympathetically told.... [A] classic, a tribute and love song to the colorful and vibrant heart of all things Mexican." The San Francisco Chronicle
Synopsis:
This historical novel is based on Urrea's real great-aunt Teresita, who had healing powers and was acclaimed as a saint. Urrea has researched historical accounts and family records for years to get an accurate story.
About the Author
Luis Alberto Urrea is the recipient of an American Book Award, a Western States Book Award, and a Colorado Book Award, and he has been inducted into the Latino Literary Hall of Fame.
What Our Readers Are Saying
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Average customer rating based on 2 comments:
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rwilson, February 25, 2008 (view all comments by rwilson)
Author Luis Urrea says it took him a lifetime to write this book. It captures the humor and power of his "auntie" Teresita who was a real healer in Mexico. Urrea gives us Mexico as it surely must have existed, because he is funny and poignant by turns--pure mexicano. I love characterization of Teresa's dad, who is a half-wild coyote himself though he is the patron of a great ranch. This book gives us a Mexico we will always love--class inequities and all. This book will stay with you forever.
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olivasdan, October 27, 2006 (view all comments by olivasdan)
Book Review
By Daniel Olivas
In the harsh yet thriving landscape of Mexico, circa 1880, the poor, illiterate and unmarried Yaqui woman (known by her tribe as The Hummingbird), gave birth to Teresita with the help of the town's healer, the curandera called Huila. Huila-one of Urrea's most remarkable creations-is as cantankerous as she is powerful. So powerful in fact that she lives in a room behind the kitchen of the great hacienda owned by the wealthy Don Tomas Urrea. Don Tomas does not care much for religion but he knows that Huila is an asset and puts up with her magic as much as Huila puts up with her patron's habit of spreading his seed despite having a beautiful, attentive wife and several children who populate the hacienda.
Teresita eventually-and literally-wanders into Don Tomas's life and is subsequently taken under Huila's wing. Huila notices two things about this unusual girl: she resembles the Urrea family and she possesses the power to heal. Don Tomas ultimately owns up to paternity and is determined to make a lady out of this barefooted urchin. But as Teresita matures, her powers grow until all know that she is the curandera women should go to when they are about to give birth or when a child becomes ill. Then one day, when Teresita goes out to the fields, she is raped, beaten and eventually dies. But on the third day, at the end of burial preparations, in the midst of five mourning women, Teresita awakes. The town is abuzz with news of this miracle.
With her resurrection comes greater healing powers and, of course, fame. The Yaquis, as well as other native tribes, mestizos, and even Americans, make pilgrimages to the Urrea hacienda. The Catholic Church views this "saint" as a heretic, the vicious and corrupt government of Porfirio Diaz considers the girl a threat, and revolutionaries want to insinuate themselves into her sphere of influence for their own political cause.
The climax brilliantly mirrors the immigrant's experience of seeking safe passage to a foreign land while relying on loved ones as well as fate. Urrea, who is the award-winning author of ten books-fiction, non-fiction and poetry-tells us in an author's note that Teresa Urrea "was a real person"-his aunt. The Hummingbird's Daughter is his fictionalization of family lore based on twenty years of intense research and interviews. The result resonates with such passion and beauty that it doesn't matter whether Teresita's legend is based more on a people's wishful thinking than truth.
The Hummingbird's Daughter is a sumptuous, dazzling novel to which no review can do justice; one simply must read it.
[The full review first appeared in The Elegant Variation.]
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Product Details
- ISBN:
- 9780316745468
- Author:
- Publisher:
- Little Brown and Company
- Subject:
- History
- Subject:
- Historical - General
- Subject:
- Teenage girls
- Publication Date:
- May 2005
- Binding:
- Hardcover
- Language:
- English
- Pages:
- 512
- Dimensions:
- 9.78x6.32x1.54 in. 1.65 lbs.
