From a priest who was in the trenches comes the heart-wrenching story of two kids on the mean streets of Chicago's South Side

South Chicago gives you lots of reasons to join a gang. Like, if you say no, they beat you up, follow your little sister home from school, and torch your house. Pretty soon, wearing your tattoo and colors, you learn what gangland means: Kill or be killed. Maybe both.

All Tony and Carlos want to do is leave the ghetto and go to college. But now the gangs have targeted them. Now, Tony and Carlos must take desperate measures to safeguard their futures and families from gangland's vengeance.

Richly textured, poignantly detailed, in a voice of raw authenticity, Daisies in the Junkyard is the story of the Mexican-American community struggling to maintain its culture and integrity against a backdrop of urban warfare.