The Blackstone Library is pleased to announce that we’ll be partnering with Eastern Connecticut State University’s Big Read program! The Big Read program is designed to revitalize the role of literature in American culture and to encourage citizens to read for pleasure and enlightenment. This year’s book is Into the Beautiful North by Luis Alberto Urrea.

In Into the Beautiful North, Urrea tells the story of an idealistic 19-year-old woman who is inspired by the film “The Magnificent Seven” to travel from her home in Mexico to the United States to convince a bunch of men who left her town to return and help protect it from drug-dealers. Urrea explores, with compassion and humor, the microcultures within the border world, from the residents of a Tijuana garbage dump to the upscale neighborhoods of San Diego, and reveals that the distance between them is not as great as one might think.