In 1923 fourteen-year-old Perfecta makes the decision she won't be perfect any more. A face-off with her father, Primitivo, the sheriff of the small Northern New Mexico town, seems to do the trick. But what now, with her mother never leaving the rocking chair at the front window and her father ignoring her? Surely even their harsh Catholic God doesn't think that dancing, smiling and laughing are sins? But Perfecta knows that falling in love with the twenty-two-year-old blue-eyed Presbyterian Isaac Martinez is a sin. When Isaac leaves for California, she promises to wait for him. But has she escaped one prison only to be trapped by another?