This is an apprenticeship novel, the story of Isabel Cooper, 17, and her
15-year-old brother, Frederick. In early 1911, they leave their
Georgetown home after the sudden death of their Mexican mother. They are
determined to find their father, a college professor who - like many
American leftists - had joined the Mexican revolution a few months
earlier. They travel by train, stagecoach, and wagon, at first put off
by what they see of turn-of-the-century American South. But they soon
learn of the quiet dignity of their mother's homeland. After an ugly
incident not of their making, they escape the federales with the help of
Pepe, a lad of many talents. He leads them to refuge with a ragtag
militia on its way to join Carranza's Army of the North, commanded by a
woman known as La Maestra