El Dorado Bay

A young U.S.-raised Mexico-born man sees one chance to get life right. His first love has careened sideways, and the baby shoes on his rear view mirror remind him of the stakes. Having self-deported, he lands in an isolated Mexican coastal village armed only with his talent as a cook. Here, winter gringo squatters pit themselves against a struggling native co-op for rule over beachfront land, and a resplendent resort arises across the bay. It’s 1996, only months after communications deregulation. Cellular phone and Internet service verge on breaking free, but still lag, complicating the young man’s already chaos-strewn life. When the wreckage of his past confronts him, he takes the painful moral high ground and risks losing the self he has regained and the community he has grown to love: the coconut-farmers-turned-fishermen, the self-important tourists, his linguistically-confused restaurateur boss, the village’s pyrotechnically-inclined priest, and a new love with a past more sordid than his own. Honor and love square off, and the fireworks begin.