Wheels Up: A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival. This item is unavailable.Wheels Up: A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival

When her notorious drug lord uncle is recaptured, Layla Navarro catapults to the top of Mexico’s most powerful cartel. Groomed as his successor, Layla knows where the bodies are buried. But not all the enemies. Plagued by self-doubt, she must navigate the minefield of Mexican machismo, outsmart government officials and fight off gangsters. Against a backdrop of lush tropical settings, Layla plots to succeed, wreak vengeance, and find herself—not to mention stay alive.

Jeanine Kitchel's ongoing love of Mexico led her to the Yucatan in 1983, and slightly more than a decade later, she left San Francisco for a relaxed lifestyle in Puerto Morelos, a fishing village on the Quintana Roo coast. TRAVEL WRITER Kitchel writes about Mexico, the Maya and the Yucatan. Her Tales from the Yucatan series can be found on oldplaneta.com. She's written for The Miami Herald/Cancun edition, El Universal/Mexico City, The News/Mexico City, The Herald/Mexico City, Baja Times, The Mexico Files, Sac-Be, and Fodor's Travel Guide: Cancun/Riviera Maya. She has contributed to websites mexicopremiere, belize.com, escapeartist.com, mexico-insights, knowmexico, and yucatanliving.com. WHERE THE SKY IS BORN Her first book, a travel memoir, Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya, tells the adventure of dream becoming reality when she and her husband left Silicon Valley jobs to pursue the dream of living in Mexico. She shares her dreams and heartaches, and tells how they coped with buying land, building a house and retiring in a foreign country. MAYA 2012 REVEALED Maya 2012 Revealed: Demystifying the Prophecy, takes a realistic look at the 2012 end date debate that surrounded the Maya calendar. As a journalist, author and former expat bookstore owner in Maya Mexico, Kitchel details who the Maya are, their calendars, breaking the code, the Maya night sky, 2012ology, the collapse, and the prophecy as seen by Maya elders. CARTEL TRILOGY/WHEELS UP: A NOVEL OF DRUGS, CARTELS AND SURVIVAL Kitchel's first novel, Wheels Up, will publish spring 2018. Once again, Mexico sits center stage. Her Latina protagonist, Layla Santos, catapults to the top of Mexico's most poweful cartel when her notorious drug lord uncle is recaptured and imprisoned. Layla struggles to survive in one of the cruelest institutions the world has ever seen. It's a story of triumph against all odds and one of personal transformation as she navigates her way through the murky world she must learn to inhabit. Her website—jeaninekitchel.com—has updates on her writing and her blog, jeaninekitchel.blogspot.com/ has stories about the Maya world - titled Maya Musings.