It's 1973. All 20-year-old Valentina Tamayo has ever wanted is to be a mother. But that dream is thwarted when her first child is stillborn and she is involuntarily sterilized by the doctors at U.C. County Hospital, who are engaged in a covert campaign to reduce the population of poor immigrants in East L.A. When her husband, Daniel, realizes there are no children in their future, he disappears. Channeling her grief into an obsessive search to find him, Valentina enlists the help of her new neighbor, Maya, a rebellious Chicana activist. When Maya's community is struck with brutality and violence, Valentina is forced to rise to the occasion. Even as she wrestles with the despair of her sterilization, she must look beyond her old identity, and find the strength to redefine her place in the world.