David, a mine engineer stationed in Kenya, and his wife, Marla, unable to conceive, adopt a black infant and name him Thomas. After coming back to the States, Marla goes through corrective surgery and gives birth to a girl, Kim. Growing together Thomas and Kim fall in love and have sex. When Thomas accidentally learns that his adoptive parents do not really want him, he leaves home and Kim becomes a runaway to be with him. Since Kim is still underage, the young lovers escape to Mexico to evade the law and end up in Barra de Potosi where they are robbed by two gamberros, and their lives are threatened. Escaping from there, with the help of a local boy, they settle in Guadalajara where Thomas is able to find work as a tour guide and Kim kills time as a homemaker. After Kim attains legal adulthood, the lovers decide to go back to the States, but not before expressing their gratitude to the kid in Barra de Potosi to whom they owe their lives. Upon arriving in the village, they find that the kid was killed by the gamberros for helping them and his mother is destitute. They leave what cash they have for the mother and, as they prepare to leave, come face to face with the gamberros who want to punish them for their past escape. This time they are saved by the kid’s mother hurling bricks at the gamberros who are injured and later thrown in jail. After settling in the States, Thomas decides to go to Kenya to find his mother, and Kim decides to go with him. Thomas learns that his mother died missing him. He also discovers the truth about his birth and adoption and that truth makes hims angry at his adoptive parents. Just so he does not get cared away with emotions and does something revengeful which destroys his and Kim’s future, he decides to leave the States. To him, self exile appears to be the only way to safeguard their lives and their forbidden love and so he and Kim settle in Barra de Potosi and adopt as their mother the woman who had saved them from the gamberros.