San Francisco in 1978 is a place of urban chaos. But for Diego Contreras it represents a dream of artistic success. As a recent college graduate from an immigrant family, he moves from Los Angeles to find something worth believing in and meets Saloma Sevilla, a wealthy Filipino-Chinese graduate student. Diego and Saloma develop an intense relationship through a series of adventures and misadventures. They must overcome the barriers of social class, family life, and past sexual abuse, as well as deal with a cast of quirky 1970s characters-drug-addled creative writing students, pompous professors, hangars-on in a boarding house, and tiresome family members. The City of San Francisco also shapes them. The mayor and city supervisor have been assassinated, an active shooter takes hostages in a downtown office building, the ""White Night"" riots have engulfed the Castro District and City Hall, and the Weather Underground has bombed a police station. Diego and Saloma must negotiate all this and come to terms with their own quiet limit of the world.