"...y no se lo tragó la tierra" is a novel divided into fourteen vignettes. The book opens with a section called "El año perdido" (The Lost Year) told from the perspective of an anonymous Chicano child, the son of two migrant workers. The unnamed child narrates some of the sections with his thoughts, memories and impressions while other people connected to his life narrate the remaining sections. The narrations come in many varying forms, from dialogue and prayer to descriptive passages. The varying perspectives form a collective narrative that piece together the events occurring over the past year of the child's life, prefaced in the first chapter. The reasoning behind having an anonymous protagonist and irregular form is left for the reader to infer.