Content Warning: This section discusses racism, addiction, depression, domestic violence, sex trafficking, abortion, wrongful commitment to and medical abuse of patients in a psychiatric hospital, ableism, anti-gay bias, suicide, sexual contact between minors, and murder.

The novel takes place in New York in the 1970s. Consuelo “Connie” Ramos, a Mexican American woman, is in her apartment when her niece, Dolores “Dolly” Camacho, arrives in a panic. Dolly is bloody from a beating from her boyfriend and pimp, Geraldo, and pleads with Connie to help her. Connie puts Dolly to bed and tells her that she should go to the emergency room, but Dolly is embarrassed by her situation. Geraldo beat her because he found out that she is pregnant with his child and because she refused to have an abortion. Dolly believed that he would forgive her and stop sexually trafficking her, but he reacted with rage. Connie tries to comfort Dolly and decide what they should do while worrying that Dolly might have overheard her talking to someone named Luciente.

Connie hopes that Dolly will have the baby and live with her; together with Nita, the child Dolly already has, they could be a family.