To Die in the USA portrays, not unlike Citizen Kane, the metaphorical death, and life of a Spanish exile. Set mainly in California and New York, but also in Spain, England, France, Venezuela, Colombia, and Chile, this work is a combination of fiction, history, and memoir. To Die in the USA is an antihero's existential odyssey from the Spanish Civil War to the Reagan Era, sometimes crude and cruel, but always tempered by a dose of black humor. This memoir is a work of self-fiction. Names have been changed, characters combined and events compressed. Certain episodes are imaginative recreation, and those episodes are not intended to portray actual events. A Spanish version of this book was originally published in 1999 under the pen name Floreal Hernández and the title Morir en Isla Vista. Out of respect for the victims of the recent tragedy in Isla Vista, the title of the English version has been changed.