Oasis Mobile Estates

Oasis Mobile Estates is the primary setting of the novel. Oasis is a trailer park community located in an unnamed town in Southern California. Lara and her mother Yevgenia relocate to this setting at the start of the novel. Although Lara is accustomed to moving from place to place, she dreads living at Oasis. Indeed, when she realizes that Yevgenia is "serious about the place" in Chapter 1, she silently begs "whatever higher power is out there" not to have to move to Oasis (8, 14). Just a cursory glance around the trailer park, convinces Lara she "can't live in this penal colony. This refuge for losers" (14). Despite her immediate disdain for the place, Lara makes no attempts to argue with her mother. She obediently moves their things into the new trailer.

Over the course of the novel, Lara's relationship with Oasis proves increasingly fraught. She grows to care...