Just after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a Mexican American boy goes with his mother from Los Angeles to New Mexico to meet her family for the first time, and, while there, he discovers his family's hidden Jewish heritage.
As he makes a seventeen-mile pilgrimage to the Santuario de Chimay? that he hopes will save his beloved grandmother from cancer, eleven-year-old Eloy is joined by a friendly dog that helps him keep going.
Angry at being forced to decide which of his divorcing parents will get custody of him, Chester is further burdened with guilty feelings about the parent he is leaving behind.
