Arturo Zamora

Arturo Zamora is the first-person narrator of the novel. He is a boy going into eighth grade in Canal Grove, a suburb of Miami, Florida. During the summer, he begins work as a dishwasher at the popular restaurant his family owns and operates. The Zamoras are an extremely large and extremely close family, both working together at the restaurant, and also living together in the same apartment complex. Arturo experiences conflict as a real estate developer, Wilfrido Pipo, attempts to take over the family's property to build his restaurant, while at the same time he is unsure of how to act on his crush to Carmen Sánchez, who is Arturo's mother's goddaughter.

For much of the novel, Arturo is afraid and timid, unsure of how to proceed with both sources of conflict. Arturo reaches a low point when he is briefly detained by Pipo's private security...