In the words of E. M. Foster, the difference between story and plot in novels can be summed up in a single word: pain. It is the pain that creates the plot. You might say that “Ramona” fits this definition as it tells the story of the passage from childhood to adolescence through all that journey’s pain. Perhaps that’s why Ramona and the cast of characters that join her don’t ask for our compassion or show any desire for redemption. Rosario Villajos creates a world where her heroine is on a journey where she knows she can’t pay the price of the ticket. It’s a world very much like our own, a world which continually rejects us with surprising ease.