Set in 1930s Los Angeles, Ask the Dust by John Fante tells the story of a young Italian writer by the name of Arturo Bandini who moves to Los Angeles from a small town in Colorado in the hopes of becoming a big-shot writer. Bandini’s life is changes drastically when he meets a young Mexican American waitress and becomes embroiled in an intense love affair that leads him to question his own American identity and the American landscape to which he belongs.