Cruz, Angie

Fifteen-year-old Ana Canci?n never dreamed of moving to America, the way the girls she grew up with in the Dominican countryside did. But when Juan Ruiz proposes and promises to take her to New York City, she has to say yes. Their marriage is an opportunity for her entire close-knit family to eventually immigrate. So on New Year's Day, 1965, Ana leaves behind everything she knows and becomes Ana Ruiz, a wife confined to a cold six-floor walk-up in Washington Heights.

Esperanza did not risk her life fleeing the Dominican Republic to live in a tenement in Washignton Heights. No, she left for the glittering dream she saw on television: JR, Bobby Ewing and the crystal chandeliers of 'Dallas'. But years later, she is still stuck in a cramped apartment with her husband, Santo, and their two children, Bobby and Dallas. She works as a home aide and, at night, stuffs unopened bills from the credit card company in her lingerie drawer where Santo won't find them when he returns from driving his livery cab. Despite their best efforts, they cannot seem to change their present circumstances. But when Santo's mother dies, back in Los Llanos, and his father, Don Chan, comes to Nueva York to live out his twilight years in the Colons small apartment, nothing will ever be the same.

Leaving Washington Heights to pursue her dreams of becoming an artist, Soledad says good-bye to her family and heads to New York University, but when her mother is taken ill, she must return home and attempt to keep her family together.