In the 1980s, Luis Alberto Urrea was looking into his family history when he hit upon the story of his great-aunt Teresita, a religious mystic and faith healer who became an inspirational icon in Mexico in the late 19th century. He spent the next two decades researching her life and the history of the region before publishing The Hummingbird's Daughter in 2005. It wasn't his first novel, but over the years it's become his most popular, and many fans have wanted to know more about what happened to Teresita after that book ended. With Queen of America, Urrea finally tells the rest of the story.

As the novel begins, Teresita and her father Tomas are in Arizona, having been forced out of Mexico after a failed uprising. Tomas's frustration with exile is expansively comic; he loves the American pop songs of the 1890s, but he's furious that he can't even get decent sopitas. ("'Oh,' the waiter said mildly, 'you mean migas... We don't serve migas. How about scrambled eggs?'") He's also irritated by the believers that continue to follow Teresita across the border to Arizona, then to El Paso, and back again. Meanwhile, Teresita falls in love with a local bad boy who turns out to be far more dangerous than foolish, and their brief relationship has long-lasting, and devastating, consequences.

Urrea's 19th-century America is both panoramic and picaresque, as Teresita sets out on her own to San Francisco, and from there eventually to New York, shuffled around the country by a group of investors who use her fame to peddle their own "health" products. Other real-life historical figures, including Ambrose Bierce and Geronimo, make cameo appearances, but it's feisty Teresita and those closest to her who give Queen of America its joyous energy. Readers will be thoroughly entertained by Urrea's Character Approved recreation of his folk heroine ancestor's remarkable life.

[Image: Nicole Waite]