Joaquina Sanchez lives in total obscurity on a bull ranch in Mexico at the end of WWII. Joaquina's father, Salvador, is the foreman of the ranch and a trainer of matadors. He's been training Joaquina all of her life and now, at 17, she's as good a matador as any man living. But it's not acceptable for a woman to be a matador. Salvador knows this but he's never told Joaquina, and he feels guilty about this. The older she gets, the more her ability improves, the more guilt he feels. So, he keeps pushing her harder and harder in the arena. Maybe he's hoping she'll walk away from bullfighting and be like his other daughters. But Joaquina has too much drive and determination to do that.

One day during a training session in the arena, they have a huge blow-up fight and Salvador humiliates Joaquina in front of the entire hacienda. She vows to leave home and never return, and the next morning she and her younger brother, Lupe, do just that. They arrive in San Diego by train on V.J. Day, 1945, amid the huge and chaotic End-of-the-War Celebration. As Joaquina and Lupe make their way through the champagne-soaked bedlam, a strange man forces Joaquina onto a sailboat in the nearby yacht harbor, where he attempts to rape her.

After a day of the most incredible party in history, Jack Hadley, wealthy young American sailor/vagabond, staggers slightly along the floating boardwalk, then steps aboard his sailboat and discovers the scene of the attempted rape!

Matadora is the compeling story of these two Mexican runaways, Joaquina and Lupe, as they begin a new life in post-war California, a place and time where anything can happen, where any dream can come to be, and where it might even be possibe for a girl from obscurity such as Joaquina to become a great bullfighter...and still find time for love.