Delmira is brought up by her mother and grandmother in an unaffectionate all-female household. She has a wicked sense of humour and a vivid imagination. Agustini, her home village, is not an ordinary place: it is a world in which Delmira sees her grandmother floating above the bed when she sleeps; where stones turn into water; where torrential rains can be bought at a travelling fair during the dry season; and where her family's elderly serving woman develops a stigmata, then disappears.

As Delmira grows into a woman she embarks on a quest to find the missing stranger who is her father, and makes a decision that forces her to leave home forever.

Carmen Boullosa's novel sparkles with the spirit of its irrepressible heroine and the invention of a fairy tale. Like a magical dream, Leaving Tabasco, will stay with its readers long after they have woken from its spell.