Los Angeles. 1983. A storm is coming and its name is crack. Set against the infancy of the crack cocaine epidemic and its ultimate radical impact on the culture as we know it, the story follows numerous characters on a violent collision course.

Nell Serrano is a broke and newly single self-described disaster. She works to restart the life and career she left behind some 10 years ago. When writing obituaries is the only job she can find, Nell starts getting life advice from an unlikely (and dead) source.

When flying reptilian creatures wreak havoc all over the world, the survivors’ only hope of stopping them is a new, state-of-the-art fighter jet piloted by the only team that knows how to use the technology.

The lives of a street punk, a millennial couple, and a Salvadoran teenager being recruited by a local gang collide, forming an interlocking story of class and identity in Echo Park, Los Angeles.