17-year-old Jesse drops out of high school and moves out of his family’s house to avoid his stepfather, who abuses alcohol. Jesse and his 21-year-old brother Abel decide to buy an apartment together with the money they get from Social Security due to their biological father’s death. Abel helps Jesse register for community college classes, where Jesse hopes to eventually major in art. As a Mexican American, jobs are scarce for him, and fieldwork is grueling. Still, Jesse and Abel are responsible and in a better situation than many of their cousins.

Jesse and Abel work picking cotton and occasionally fruit, a grueling job that the former hopes will be made better by labor union activist César Chávez. The job nets good money, but Abel says they work like slaves. As Jesse works in the fields, he “hummed made up songs. I knew slaves had sung to get through their sweaty hours” (11). Abel believes change may come, but people will have to die for it, like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Jesse doesn’t think the current U.S. President, Richard Nixon, is doing a good job; there are fewer employment opportunities and a noticeable rundown of public places.