Rita arrives in hot, humid Puerto Rico from Paterson, New Jersey with a bad attitude. She has been sent to spend the summer with her grandparents as an alternative to a retreat at a convent, where her friend Meli has been sent. Her parents want her out of contact with her racy boyfriend, Johnny Ruiz, and the result is her exile to the island.

Rita has never spent more than two weeks at a time on the island and she has no desire to get better acquainted with it now. She finds her grandparents and their friends annoyingly gregarious and overwhelming; when she tries to calm herself in the car by practicing deep breathing, her grandmother assumes she's having an asthma attack and harangues her with asthma stories. What Rita really wants is to be left alone.

As soon as the family gets back from the...