With a cast of characters so vivid they seem to leap from the page, this collection of linked short stories offers a portrait of individuals aching to find their place in an indifferent world. The characters who inhabit these stories -- teenagers, beauty queens, race car drivers, and even grandfathers -- fall in love, strive to make ends meet, or search for answers to their future while reconciling the past. Michael Jaime-Becerra casts a warm glow on each of them.

Winner of an International Latino Book Award for Best Novel

Gilbert Gaeta, a forklift operator in a dairy, can barely make payments on the house where he lives with his thirteen-year-old daughter, Ana. When a month of overtime shifts comes his way, he begins to envision a new life, one in which he can save enough money for an engagement ring and finally propose to his girlfriend, Joyce. He works the night shift, exhausted but making good money, and it's looking like his plan will work. Then Ana is chased home from the Laundromat by bullies, and she begins pushing him to buy a...