"After a tragedy separates her from her mother, Juana Garcia leaves her small town in Mexico to find her father, who left his family two years earlier to find work in America and rise above the oppressive poverty of his country. Out of money and in need of someone to help her across the border, Juana meets Adelina Vasquez, a young woman who left her family in California to follow her lover to Mexico. Finding themselves--in a Tijuana jail--in desperate...

Presents a young reader's adaptation of the author's experiences as an illegal child immigrant, describing her father's violent alcoholism, her efforts to obtain a higher education, and the inspiration of Latina authors.