Chapters 1 and 2 Summary and Analysis

Chapter One

Luis begins by remembering a day when he is nine and the family is on the way to Union Station. He says his mother has purchased him a new comic book, his father is refusing to return to Mexico and his mother is angry. Luis then flashes back to the history of the family and earlier memories. He says that his father met his mother in Indiana while participating in a foreign study program. His father, forty at the time he married Luis's mother, had children from previous relationships. Luis recounts the story that his half-sister, Seni, was left with her grandmother for so long that she didn't recognize her father when he returned.

After his parents are married, Luis's father is jailed for allegedly stealing money from the school where he works as principal. He is...