I'd wondered about my mother all my life -- what she looked like, how she smelled and sounded and acted. Lately this wondering had grown to encompass a curiosity about the kind of people she herself came from, because they were my family, too, after all, even though I knew nothing about them. I'd no idea whether they were loud or soft-spoken, funny or boring, preferred chocolate to vanilla, if they liked movies over books or the other way around....

Sixteen-year-old Rasheed is smart, tough and a survivor. In his neighborhood, he has to be. The streets are run by a gang called the E Street Locals, and they've been trying to jump him in since he was a child. So far, he's managed to escape their clutches. But the gang is not his only problem. Rasheed's sister, Daneeka, was paralyzed in a drive-by shooting, and now she's confined to a wheelchair, mentally frozen at the age of nine. His mother is...

Rosario Gomez, having given up gang life after his brother was killed, is working hard to be a good father and earn a promotion at his job when a friend from the barrio shows up and tempts him back into his old ways.

Old Thomas Mann gets a second crack at fatherhood when a baby boy is delivered to his doorstep. A note identifies the boy as the illegitimate child of Mann's son, Eddie, a soldier killed in Vietnam. The novel is narrated by the boy.