The setting is the Mexican-American community in Fresno, California. Surrounding the city are the great farms that feed much of the United States. In these dusty fields lies Eddie's heritage, for nearly everyone in the Mexican-American community Eddie has grown up in has ties to the fields. For those who have worked the fields, simply surviving is a struggle. This sun-drenched world of poverty and broken dreams provides few options. Although those in Eddie's community have escaped the fields, they find themselves limited by lack of opportunity in town. Nineteen-year-old Eddie, like his neighbors, knows of little outside the schools, playgrounds, and streets of his neighborhood. Eddie feels the confinement of his community all too well: "This was my barrio, the landscape I had known all my life. I had gotten in fights on this street and cut the lawn for a vieja who had long been gone...