It's the summer of 1978 and sixteen-year-old Antonio "Tony" McCaugh has tried to comit suicide. Rather than hire an expensive psychologist, Tony's mother flies him from his Appalachian father's house to San Francisco so Tony can spend the summer with his womanizing, pot-smoking, peyote-eating Uncle Juan "Jack" Villalobos. Hanging out with Jack, she believes, is guaranteed to shake Tony out of his depression.