Frances

Frances is a 16-year-old girl living with her parents in Raton. She is eager to move away from this town and eager to start university. She wishes she had the life of her cousin, Nancy, who lives in Santa Fe with her permissive mother. Frances is excited to attend the fiestas so that she can experience city life without adult supervision. She wants to be seen as a sophisticated adult, carrying Tess of the D’Urbervilles while on the bus. She also wants to downplay her lack of worldly experience and is glad her cousin lives far from her so that she can exaggerate her contact with boys. She wants her life to be interesting enough to be a novel and hopes that the night at the fiestas will have material that could “constitute the first page” (Location 1127).

Frances is annoyed that her father is the bus driver...