Goddess of the Flowers by Stefanie Auerbach Stolinsky PB

Gorgeous Xochitl (pronounced “so-she”) Gonzalez is a Fifteen year old street waif in rural Mexico who is seized with her mother, by Cartel leader, Carlos Morales, to be his “queen” at his massive hacienda.

Life becomes a dream of wealth, gold, expensive cars, bag loads of cash and jewelry. And all she has to do is “train” new girls to the tricks of the trade. How to please the men they will be sold to across the Rio Grande and into the U.S. Not realizing these girls will also be sneaking drugs and other contraband into the States, Xochitl entices them into the life of fantasy that a gang girl can have riches in America.

During a trafficking exchange, something goes terribly wrong, and Xochitl witnesses the brutal murder of a 13-year-old who appeared to be investigating Carlos’ cocaine stash. After realizing the same thing will happen to her when she “ages-out” at sixteen years old, she decides to escape the hacienda, taking with her two new girls, a stash of coke to trade at the border, and a gun.

She discovers she is pregnant with Carlos’ child and as she is chased down by the vicious gang, arrested by the U.S. Government, incarcerated in an El Paso detention hall, bailed out and saved by a Madame who puts her to work in an “upscale” brothel, she makes a deal with Carlos to trade her son for the release of her mother and other girls primed for slavery. If she can help other girls out of the life of crime and despair, her own life would be saved. Through strength and determination, she never realized she had, she escapes from them all.

When the politician who really owns the brothel is murdered, Xochitl puts into play her bribe with Carlos in order to save her mother, the new girls about to be enslaved and, and through fear and a desperate desire for safety, she is able to stop Carlos with the help of her new found lover, FBI agent Guy Morton, and emerge as one of the most powerful allies the country has ever had for rooting out the brutality of human smuggling.