Set in deep, humid South Texas—where Mexico is a ten-minute drive and culturally characterizes the region—Parts tells the story of vulgar Mexican men working in the auto parts industry, men who create a suffocating atmosphere of machismo, immorality, and sexual innuendo. The novel's narrator, an auto parts stocker and driver unable to quit his job out of a sense of obligation to his family, seeks out the written word as a means to escape, which contrasts sharply with the pelado environment where he works and allows for a closer inspection of the pelado archetype inside the walls of the warehouse.