American Tumbleweeds

the long version

"Set along the border between El Paso, Texas, and Juárez, Mexico, American Tumbleweeds tells the bittersweet story of a Mexican-American family's struggle to stay together as tradition collides with the social upheaval of 1960s America"--Back cover. "Inez comes home from school to find FBI agents ransacking the house and her father under arrest for smuggling marijuana. In the devastating aftermath, the old ways cherished by her beloved Mexican grandmother offer refuge. But life in El Paso is far more exciting, as miniskirts, rock music, and the sexual revolution shatter tradition on both sides of the border. Poised between two countries and between childhood and adulthood, her fractured family no longer providing safe ground, Inez must choose whether to make the dangerous leap her parents never quite made, the leap faced by every new American: letting go of the old country to embrace a new destiny in the United States"--Amazon