Fourteen-year-old Chato is forced to grow up too soon when immigration agents take his father from his home and deport him to Mexico. In his father’s absence, Chato grapples with becoming the man of the house, and struggles to match up to the image of what his mother wants him to be. Chato’s brown skin has everyone wondering when he’ll turn delinquent, but he hopes to find a brighter future for himself between the pages of his books. When thirteen-year-old Ryan, a middle-class white kid caught in the crossfire of his parents’ divorce, moves in across the street, he and Chato form a friendship that shakes their low-income Latino neighborhood. Though they’re as different as night and day, the painful reality of their broken homes brings the boys face-to-face with the same decision: whether or not to get jumped into a gang. Chato and Ryan are left navigating this neighborhood, known as the One-Ways, where every street tries to convince them there’s only one way they can go.