Ivon Villa, the protagonist, is a 31-year-old Mexican-American professor from El Paso, Texas, who lives in Los Angeles. Ivon is an out lesbian, and she is sharp, outspoken, and not easily intimidated. When the novel begins, she is finishing her dissertation, “Marx Meets the Women’s Room: The Representation of Class and Gender in Bathroom Graffiti” (17). 

Part of Ivon’s character arc involves preparing herself for motherhood. Ivon for years rejected her wife Brigit’s suggestion that they adopt a child because she was on a “[j]ob-tenure-real estate” plan (99) that would enable her to invite her sister Irene to live with them. Her plan changed when she encountered a little boy in a bookstore calling for his dad, but when the woman whose baby Ivon and Brigit planned to adopt is murdered and a backup plan to adopt a three-year-old boy falls through, Ivon decides to put adoption on hold. 

When Irene is kidnapped, Ivon witnesses their mother’s grief and understands the pain that parenthood can involve. However, this—as well as Ivon’s sexual affair with her ex-girlfriend Raquel—shows her the importance of family. By the end of the novel, Ivon realizes that her doctorate does not matter “if her family was falling apart” (270).