Outgoing, independent-minded fifty-something-year-old Eloisa Cavazos Diaz, Auntie, decides to invite her eighteen-year-old niece, Barbara Esquivel, on a road trip to Tampico Mexico in search of her baptismal certificate. During the twelve hours drive through south Texas and into Mexico, Auntie tells Barbara the story about an overlooked ancestor, José Narciso Cavazos, to whom the King of Spain awarded 600,000 acres of Texas land, El Agostadero De San Juan de Carricitos. Skirting the Texas counties of El Agostadero, Auntie brings to life how in 1793, Narciso abandoned the aristocratic comforts of the established La Hacienda De Los Cavazos in Nuevo Leon, Mexico, to start something new, challenging, and full of obstacles in a barren landscape known to both Spain and Mexico as no man’s land. In vivid detail, Auntie chronicles Narciso’s passion to not only slog through the wild pasturage of Texas but also to appease the Indians who saw their territory dwindling as a result of land grants the Mexican government freely gave away.

Auntie and Barbara manage the ebbs and flows of mixing the Mexican and American cultures, hilarious encounters with humans and animals, dealing with absent American comforts yet welcoming locals, and the beautiful landscape of Mexico, Barbara slowly begins to appreciate her rich cultural heritage and the role Narciso played in Tejano history. In the process, both women reveal secrets neither had shared with anyone before.