Emma's childhood memories allow us to share the ups and downs, the joys, the sadness, of the migrant life in the U.S. in the late 1950s and 60s. Her gifted use of imagery allows the reader to experience her life through the eyes of a child. American born Emma Gonzalez was trapped in the nomadic lifestyle of her naturalized migrant American family. The book shows how her family's situation spiraled downward economically for ten years as she was dragged from Ovid, Colorado to Texas. Ovid was only place where she found stability. Her teachers, friends and towns people "adopted" this lost migrant kid. She educated herself wherever she was to succeed. Alienation from her family is constant in her writing as she felt the family held her significance to the equivalent of the field mice she played with.