The House of Broken Angels

Perla is Big Angel’s wife and the love of his life. She was born in La Paz and met Big Angel at a police station after a car accident. She has two sons by a first husband and a son and daughter with Big Angel. Perla is Big Angel’s biggest devotee—she sees him as a hero, despite any of his wrongdoings, and her representation of him speaks to his character. Though Perla is relatively passive around Big Angel, Big Angel acknowledges her contribution to their family’s success. The bond between Perla and Big Angel speaks to larger themes of love, family, and resilience. 

Little Angel is Big Angel’s half-brother. He was born to a white mother and their shared Mexican father, and because he is half-white, he such struggles with his identity and his role in the family. He lives in Seattle and works as a college literature professor, where he goes by Gabriel instead of Angel. Big Angel loves but also resents Little Angel. Their relationship is one of compassion, strain, and mutual respect. Of all the siblings, Little Angel is closest to Big Angel and most beloved by Minnie and Lalo. Little Angel transforms over the course of the novel from a man in denial of his own heritage to a man who accepts the nuances and grey areas of racial identity and family relationships. His growth ties in to the themes of Mexican-American identity and the struggle to live on the border between two ways of being. 

Don Segundo was Big Angel’s father. He was a motorcycle policeman in Big Angel’s early years and left the family when Big Angel was a teenager to marry a white woman in San Diego. Don Segundo appears often as a ghost, smoking a cigarette and looking down on Big Angel. He is a symbol of old-world fatherhood; he is cruel to his children, though he loves them, and he abandons them without regard for their well-being or safety. Don Segundo becomes a counterpoint for other fathers in the novel, who compare themselves to him for better or worse make sense of their role in their children’s lives. 

Minnie is Big Angel’s daughter and the only girl in the family. At the time of the story she is nearly 40, though Big Angel treats her like a little girl. Minnie helps Perla with Big Angel’s caregiving although she has three young children of her own. She is strong and confident and as reflective as Big Angel—she spends time at night in the darkness, drinking wine and pondering her life. Minnie is the ascending matriarch of the family; Little Angel recommends she replace Big Angel as head of the family after his death, sparking a shift to matrilineal power in the family. 

Lalo is Big Angel’s youngest son. He joined the military after joining a gang as a teenager, and his roots haunt him throughout the novel. He is in recovery, though he uses drugs to treat a disabling leg injury he received in Iraq. Though Lalo has been jailed and now lives in his parents’ garage, he is not the black sheep of the family. His treatment by Big Angel speaks to the preferential treatment of men in the family. Lalo is also a symbol of gang violence in the novel and actively fights against the never-ending cycle of payback in the form of revenge killing. 

El Yndio, or Yndio, is Perla’s eldest son. He is the only one of Perla’s children who remembers her first husband. Yndio is the prodigal son, represented by his “prodigal” tattoo. He fights with Big Angel, who was cruel to him as a child, and leaves home at a young age to embrace his queerness. He identifies as non-binary, and after 10 years of avoiding his family, he returns home. Yndio is shocked to find the gender roles and patriarchal norms of his family have shifted since his disappearance. His acceptance by Big Angel is a pivotal part of the novel’s resolution. 

MaryLú is Big Angel’s sister. She is still in love with her ex-husband, Leo, and lives alone in Mamá América’s old house. MaryLú cared for Mamá América in her final days, alongside La Gloriosa. She is a loving sister and accepting of Little Angel despite the tumultuous nature of their family history.

La Gloriosa is Perla’s baby sister. She is beautiful and cares deeply about her appearance. She is the love interest of nearly all of the family men, though she only has eyes for Little Angel. La Gloriosa comes across as a vapid and vain woman in the beginning, but her character develops as she admits her grief for her dead son Guillermo, and she finds love with Little Angel at the end of the book. 

César is Big Angel’s younger brother. He is also called Pato (“duck”) because he has a voice like Donald Duck. César is the father of Marco Antonio, and his ideas about fatherhood shift the narrative from one of violence and abandonment to one of acceptance and love. César is a gentle man and a good father.

Ookie is the mentally disabled neighbor of Big Angel and Perla. He befriends Big Angel, and they build a model of San Diego together from Legos. Ookie is loved by Big Angel, and he is a symbol of Big Angel’s goodwill, kindness, love, and acceptance.