Danny is sixteen years old and struggling to find his identity in the absence of his father. His feelings of abandonment are compounded by a sense that due to his mixed heritage—he is half-Mexican and half-white—he does not belong. He wants desperately, or at least he thinks he does, to fit into his dad’s Mexican family. They accept, love and even admire Danny, but he sees his whiteness and relative privilege as obstacles keeping him separate. The Lopezes speak predominantly Spanish, which is another barrier for Danny, because he only speaks English. Nevertheless, he feels that by spending time with them, he might become more like them, and ‘more Mexican,’ which is something he thinks his father wanted.

Lacking information about the reasons his father has left, Danny has created his own. He believes his dad has moved to Mexico to get away from a city where there are so many white people, himself being one of them. He is consumed by the idea that he is not Mexican enough and that his whiteness is the reason his father left him.

Danny’s coming of age is marked by his inability to define his place in the world. His mother has moved Danny and Julia away from National City to Leucadia, a beach community in northern San Diego County.