Jeanine Kitchel

Layla Navarro catapults to the top of Mexico’s most powerful cartel when her notorious drug lord uncle is recaptured. To expand cartel influence she accepts an offer to move two tons of cocaine from Colombia to Cancun by jet. Along for the ride are her abusive bodyguard/lover, the laidback Canadian pot grower who set up the deal, and a coke-addicted Vietnam vet. The deal takes a bad turn during a stopover in Guatemala when Layla unexpectedly uncovers a sex-trafficking ring....

Jeanine Kitchel writes about Mexico, the Maya and the Yucatán. She and her husband began traveling to the Yucatán Peninsula in the early 1980s. What started as lazy beach vacations soon turned into land hunting expeditions fueled by the dream of dropping out and escaping their hectic nine to five jobs in San Francisco. In 1989 they bought land in Puerto Morelos, a fishing village south of Cancun, where they broke ground for their house. In 1997 they left California behind and drove to Mexico with Max, their cat. Shorty after setting in they opened Alma Libre Libros, one of seven bookstores in the state. By this time Kitchel had become a serious Mayaphile. Her love of the Maya culture led them to pyramid sites throughout Mexico and Central America. Soon, at the request of a publisher friend, she began writing travel articles about her adopted homeland. Her travel memoir, Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya and Maya 2012 Revealed: Demystifying the Prophecy are available on Amazon. She recently branched into fiction and her debut novel, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, launched May 2018.

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