Sam Mandel

Chris is a teenager growing up as the eldest of three children in Brooklyn, New York during the early 1980s. Uprooted to a new neighborhood and bused to a predominantly white middle school two-hours away by his strict, hard-working parents, Chris struggles to find his place while keeping his siblings in line at home and surmounting the challenges of junior high.

Family attorney and mom, Lynn Holt, has had to scramble to keep her family and her law firm together, since her husband left her and took most of their joint law practice with him. Although the attorneys are carting plenty of life's baggage, they're all determined to make the most of this unexpected second chance—and make each month's mortgage payment.

A cross-cultural look at the immigrant experience in Los Angeles, through the parallel lives of a Mexican seamstress and a Lithuanian butcher.