In the town of Izayoc, a group of young children are playing marbles. The group, quite rambunctious at times, is only looking to win one thing - the Devil's Fire marble, the thing that the book was named after. With the mind of a child, it is easy to imagine that winning this marble will bring about magical happenings - after all, the beauty of the described marble seems to be unbearable. Yet, only one boy can win this figure of a child's imagination, and the author picks the winner to be Mosca, one of the oldest and wisest boys in the group.
All of Mosca's friends become jealous of him once he wins the marble, and he tries to stop them from stealing it or convincing him to gamble it. The fact that Mosca has one a single marble doesn't seem very significant, but it is to the plot of the book - in this little Mexican town, things are starting to change. How is it that the poor neighbors now have brand new cars? That people now have a brighter attitude?
Boli is thirteen years old, and was there when Mosca won the marble. He didn't become as jealous as some of his other friends, but certainly envied that he didn't win the marble. Boli's parents abruptly decide to leave for the town of Toluca, and they never come back to Boli - no one explains what really happened on the journey. One day, a man comes to town shortly after the trip, and seems very hungry for a meal. A wrestler, the man is quite poor, and Boli has plans for himself and the wrestler to find his parents. The task seems quite daunting, but the novel proves that Boli is growing up, and we see through the harsh reality of the crime and drug filled streets of the Mexican village that Boli lives in that there still is some good left in this world. We learn that the marble was simply a symbol - not everything was changing because of it. Only Boli was changing, growing up and trying to see past the Devil's temptations that the marble represents.
