The Water Museum

by Luis Alberto Urrea

Overview

This hard-hitting, beautiful short story collection from one of America's preeminent literary voices “reflect[s] both sides of his Mexican-American heritage while stretching the reader's understanding of human boundaries” (Kirkus).

Examining the borders between one nation and another, between one person and another, Urrea reveals his mastery of the short form. This collection includes the Edgar-award winning "Amapola" and his now-classic "Bid Farewell to Her Many Horses," which had the honor of being chosen for NPR's "Selected Shorts" not once but twice.

Suffused with wanderlust, compassion, and no small amount of rock and roll, The Water Museum is a collection that confirms Luis Alberto Urrea as an American master.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316334396
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	04/26/2016
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	944,779
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his landmark work of nonficiton The Devil's Highway, Luis Alberto Urrea is also the bestselling author of the novels The Hummingbird's Daughter, Into the Beautiful North, and Queen of America, as well as the story collection The Water Museum, a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist.

He has won the Lannan Literary Award, an Edgar Award, and a 2017 American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, among many other honors. Born in Tijuana to a Mexican father and American mother, he lives outside of Chicago and teaches at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

Editorial Reviews

"All 13 stories are realistic and unsparing, as unflinching and hard-hitting as they are beautiful. It's difficult to find comparisons to an author as original as Urrea, a kind of literary badass who still believes in love. The Water Museum is a brilliant, powerful collection, and Luis Alberto Urrea is a master storyteller with a rock and roll heart."—NPR.org

"Urrea, celebrated for his historical sagas and nonfiction, offers 13 stories that reflect both sides of his Mexican-American heritage while stretching the reader's understanding of human boundaries...Urrea's command of language is matched only by his empathy for his characters."—Kirkus (Starred Review)

"Urrea has a wonderful eye for details and captures each story's context with wonderfully sharp observations... These stories are vibrant, tender, and invoke a strong sense of place."—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

The author reads his descriptive stories at a steady, poetic pace for the listener. Luis Alberto Urrea's narration is soft, almost tender, and raspy in parts. He shifts capably between the thoughts and dialogue of male and female characters, handling both with sensitivity. Urrea enjoys his prose, and so does the listener, as he describes the difficult choices facing people who live in the American West. His measured cadence doesn't prepare the listener for the twists and turns in many of the stories, such as the surprise ending in "Amapola," winner of the Edgar award in 2010. In the American West and Southwest of these stories, the landscape is harsh, lives even harsher, but Urrea's narration is as gentle as a whisper. M.R. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

AUGUST 2015 - AudioFile