The North Platte River, seeking its confluence with the Missouri River, flows from Wyoming into western Nebraska along the base of Scotts Bluff, an historic Oregon Trail landmark. This region of Nebraska is the locale for In The Shadow of the Bluff. The time is about 1960 as migrant workers from Mexico and the Texas Rio Grande Valley perennially swarmed in and out of the area each spring and summer to work in the sugar beet and bean fields. At that time, the author was a young editorial staff member of the daily Scottsbluff Star-Herald newspaper. Consequently, many of the novel's incidents have a similarity to events she covered as a news reporter. However, all of this book's characters are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living ordead, is purely coincidental. In the book, Manuel Cepeda, a young boy trapped inside his typically dysfunctional migrant family, struggles to break away. Maria, a young girl of an equally troubled migrant family, is instrumental in his efforts. As Manuel stumbles along a local Catholic priest aids him. In The Shadow of the Bluff vividly portrays the travails of life among the migrant workers.
