Twenty years after four Chicano campus activists were attacked by a masked gang along a lonely road outside town and their leader, Rocky Ruiz, was shot down, the survivors begin to feel the heat. Tough- talking Tino Pacheco is killed; community center leader Orlie Martinez is beaten; and Judge Hector Garcia goes into hiding. Luis Montez, another friend who left early on the fatal night, now finds his own life on the rocks. His ex-wife is touching him for money he doesn't have; his crummy clients are beginning to turn up their noses at him; and when one of them, enormous Donna Armstrong, enlivens her eviction proceedings by attacking her landlord, the Denver disciplinary committee gets on Luis's case. The only bright spot in his life is impossibly young Teresa Fuentes, who's so determined not to get involved with him that she takes off with surly Detective Philip Coangelo on her tail, determined to tie her into the killings. A thickly atmospheric first novel--with just enough mystery to hold together a powerfully elegiac memoir of the heady early days of Chicano activism.
