Esperanza Rising consists of fourteen chapters. It tells the story of the protagonist, Esperanza, who is the daughter of a wealthy Mexican landowner. At the start of the story, she has known nothing but luxury, but her journey towards womanhood will prove to bring more hardship than she could ever have imagined.

In the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution, Esperanza's father is murdered, and after a series of unfortunate events, her mother decides that they, together with their former servants, need to flee the country.

The family winds up in California, where Esperanza finds that she has to work and becomes consumed with the idea of raising enough money to allow her grandmother, Abuelita, to leave Mexico and join the family in their new life.

This story is a bildungsroman, or coming of age novel, and Esperanza does a lot of growing up, especially when her mother becomes ill. She also gets a wakeup call when a group of striking Mexican workers are deported, and she realizes that people like her are not treated fairly in the United States.

All this happens when Esperanza is just thirteen, and by the time Abuelita joins them, she has accepted her new, vastly different life and has new hopes and plans for her future.