"It's the spring of 1978. John Travolta is riding high in Saturday Night Fever. Elvis has recently been laid to rest in Graceland. And in Knoxville, Tennessee, sixteen-year-old Antonio (Tony) McCaugh has just tried slashing his wrists."--BOOK JACKET. "Rather than resorting to anti-depressants, a quiet clinic, or a licensed psychotherapist, Tony's mother arranges for her despondent son to spend the summer in sunny California - with his womanizing, pot-smoking, disreputable Uncle Jack, a/k/a Juan Villalobos. (Can you say "macho"?) Hanging out with Jack, she believes, is a sure-fire recipe for lifting young Tony out of his despair."--BOOK JACKET. "The plan works....But what Mama doesn't realize is that she's also plunged the naive teenager into a world of dope-smuggling and tough-guy hoods. Soon Tony and his uncle are fleeing to Mexico in Jack's 1967 Mustang. At first embarrassed by his uncle - who's as vividly Latino-flavored as his grandmother's tamales - Tony begins to discover that there's more to the man than the macho cliche of family legends. Jack, in turn, helps Tony come to grips with his young manhood, ultimately re-awakening his appetite for life."--BOOK JACKET.