This is a vivid, stifling tail of first love and heartbreak, written in the Spanglish of Francisca, a not-so-sweet sixteen fresh of the plane in Miami, dragged with her sister to the promised land of Yanquilandia from Colombia by her controlling, born-again-christian mother, where they live in a small apartment with with her drunkard abuela.

Sucked into the world of the local evanglical church against her will, she falls for the pastors' adopted daughter, Carmen. She 'accepts Jesus into her heart' in order to be with her crush, and finally there's a source of joy in her existence, where she's otherwise an outsider at all turns.

Along the way we learn of past quinceañera vidas of the matriarchs of Francesca's family; her abuela, the most eligible costeña bachorette who wanted to have nothing to do with any of her suitors, much to her father's consternation, and her mother, the capitalist-schoolgirl taking advantage of the artesanas indíginas to make a profit from her private-school classmates, and running away from home, and falling into a life of drugs and sex.

The writing is so compelling you can taste the sweat, feel the weight of the heat and the oppression of her family life.