The book opens as Marisela Benavidez, a senior at a school the author refers to as Theodore Roosevelt High School in Denver, Colorado, tries to talk her father out of attending the senior prom. At a dance recital, she tells her friends about the problem, which is the last of a series of battles with her traditional father about how fast she is Americanizing. Marisela is an outgoing person and a straight-A student who also likes to party. Her friend, Yadira Vargas, is "quiet," while Marisela is "boisterous" (8), but they both have the same problem—they are about to graduate from high school without legal status.

Thorpe visits Marisela’s apartment complex on the day of the problem. Marisela lives in a "cinder-block" set of "dilapidated" (8) buildings in Lakewood, Colorado, a suburb of Denver. There, the author comes across Marisela’s father, Fabian, who works waxing floors at night for a company called National Maintenance, and her mother, Josefa, who works as a maid, along with their younger daughter, Rosalinda. They also have two younger sons, Rafael, the youngest, and Nestor. Fabian recently gave up drinking—he drank "up to thirty beers a day" (9) so that he could sleep during the day and work at night—to keep an eye on his daughter.