In the summer of 1958, ten-year-old Adam de la Cruz makes a startling discovery: he is from a family of powerful sorcerers, Mexican brujos. After the sudden death of his mother, his father leaves him and his older sister, Maria, with their grandmother in the barrio of East Los Angeles. As the summer wanes, Adam watches in horror as that power – called El Regalo, or The Gift – tears his family apart. Betrayed and terrorized, he eventually flees. Thirteen years later he surfaces in San Francisco, wasted on drugs, only a bitter shell. There, through the friendship of a Korean martial arts master and a woman whose destiny is intertwined with his, Adam finds redemption. Ultimately he must return to L.A., confront his father, and battle his sister for control of the power that is his birthright.