Public Eye

Surely I've said it before, and perhaps I'll say it again -- but Sunday's One City, One Story shebang in which Pasadena's head librarian Jan Sanders interviewed novelist Luis Alberto Urrea was the best ever in our seven-year history of the community event.

It wasn't hurt by the cool new setting of the just-opened Convention Center on East Green Street. Sarah Reingewirtz's staff photo above shows what an interesting big room it is.

It was swell to see the big Sunday afternoon crowd -- something on the order of 300 people showed up, I would say just from a quick look.

And surely Urrea's "The Hummingbird's Daughter," based on an ancestor of his in northern Mexico, a magical woman called Teresita who performed miracles of a sort, resonated with area readers.

But what made this the best ever was the level of conversation between Sanders and Urrea. The author is at least as good a conversationalist as he is a writer -- the power of his personality is so strong that he would shine on a "Letterman" or a "Charlie Rose,"
and we were all his Sunday afternoon.

"I wish you guys would take over, because we screwed up" -- Urrea on growing up in a family of strong women.

Son of a Mexican father and an American mother, Urrea was born and raised in Tijuana -- but he acknowledges that his looks are more Irish than anything else. He was of mixed parentage on both sides -- one of his Baja grandmothers was named Guadalupe Murray.

He first read about his ancestor in Carey McWilliams' "North from Mexico." But she was legend in the region. "You're the son of a saint," said a drifter who had come to Sonora to sample the peyote. "How do you know?" asked Urrea. "Because I can feel your aura, Flaco."

When he was teaching at Harvard, he found another book in the stacks on Teresita, and began his two-decade research that led to "Daughter."

He introduced a cousin who was sitting in the front row: Teresita's "great-granddaughter is here," he said. "She'll be healing in the back later."

All her milagros had been chalked up to "menstrual enthusiasm" at one point in an old newspaper Urrea found.

Antonio Banderas will star as Tomas in a coming film version -- Tomas the greatest horseman for miles around: "He had eaten on horses, stood on horses, vomited on horses, and, in 1871, made love while trotting on a horse. Ajua! Viva el amor! Someday he would try it at a dead run."