Luis Alberto Urrea made a strong debut in 1993-1994 with two books brought out by mainstream commercial publishers. His sustained naturalism, exciting imagery, and confessional tone appear in a variety of genres, including essays, long and short fiction, poetry, and journalism. The themes he treats in his writing are also reflected in his graphic art. "My art work," he said of his collage and pen-and-ink pieces that appeared in the special Summer/Winter 1986 art issue of Tino Villanueva's Imagine: International Chicano Poetry Journal, "is a chronicle of a longing--perhaps for God, perhaps for shelter, I cannot say. Everybody there is looking for home."

The response to his work was immediate, affirmative, and sustained. The comments of writer and critic Arthur Salm in The San Diego Union-Tribune (17 April 1994) are typical. After calling for some improvement in the structure of Urrea's first novel, In Search of Snow (1994), Salm conceded that...