Paperback: 355 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.72 x 7.78 x 5.07 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper); (September 1996) ISBN: 014023828X

Men and women with brown faces and strong backs who risk everything to cross the Mexican border and invade the American Dream are the Okies of the 1990s.  

Two of them, Candido and America Rincon, have come to Southern California and are living in a makeshift camp deep in a ravine, fighting off starvation.  

At the top of Topanga Canyon, Los Angeles liberals Delaney and Kyra Mossbacher lead an ordered sushi-and-recycling existence in a newly gated hilltop community: he a sensitive nature writer, she an obsessive realtor.  

And from the moment a freak accident brings Candido and Delaney into intimate contact, the two couples and their opposing worlds gradually intersect in what becomes a tragicomedy of error and misunderstanding.

The setting is in California in a ritzy neighborhood with its perks.

The Main characters are Delaney, Kira, Candito, and America. Delaney is a well to do guy. He has a wife, Kira, a son and two dogs. Kira is the breadwinner of the household, with her main stay in Real-estate. Candito is an honest immigrant man trying to make a living in the USA with his pregnant wife America.

Plot : Delaney hits a man in the road. This man is like a dog, he is filthy and obviously not a middle class citizen. With $20 and a look behind his shoulder Delaney is off and back to his life.  

Candito was on his way back to his wife when a rich white man struck him. He refused any medical treatment because that meant deportation for him, and an unsecured life for America. In two different worlds, both man and their wives find out the interrelationship between all human beings and what it is to have hope.

Techniques: T.C. Boyle masterly uses flashing back between the lives of Candito, America, Delaney, and Kira, to show different perspectives while giving incredible depth to his novel.

Themes: Boyle's characters are the epitome of the American condition. They show the hypocrisy that lives all around us. He shows a perspective between the lowest forms of human life to the highest and how they interchange. What we can be in life, what we are, and what we want to be is all relative.
Emanuel Schikaneder from Arizona

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