In a jungle village an old man sees a strange girl who has collapsed in a field. Once a holy man, he is sure she is not an evil spirit. He carries her inside despite his wife’s warning that the girl is the evil Xtabay, pretending to be lost and exhausted.
The girl has fled her home in search of a mysterious boy who wandered into her village. She senses in him her own despair and loneliness and intends to follow him to the "great modern city" he was seeking.
Using archetypal figures — the man, the boy, the woman—John Rechy’s Pablo! is steeped in indigenous myths and superstitions. Restless spirits roam the dark jungle howling for redemption amid the pyramids of their ancestors, witches predict doom and snakes stir ancient curses, like the disastrous loss of crops. Native religious rituals conflict dangerously with the Catholic religion.
The novel is framed by a Mayan legend about the soul wandering aimlessly until the sun and moon fuse. Like the forgotten bride who longs endlessly for the elusive sun, the girl searches for the boy in the vast contemporary city.