This fictionalized account of the co-author's formative years as a poor indigenous girl in Ecuador who is sold by her family into servitude for a local Hispanic family is a tragic, eye-opening tale of how far determination can get one. Several times in the novel, the protagonist, Virginia, is given the chance to escape to freedom, but her “freedom“ is to go back to her people and grow potatoes the rest of her life. She makes a different choice.