This is a story of personal triumph over inner demons, and public evil. The best and the worst that can be found in a woman; selflessness and selfishness as it is manifested in the “fairest sex “ and exposed and depicted in it’s rawest form, without a veneer, for the world to see.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Synopsis
2. List of Chapters, chapter-by-chapter Summaries
3. Sample Chapters

SYNOPSIS
Dr. Catalina Steel has always been an overachiever; she is a graduate of the University of Miami, holds a master’s degree in criminology, a law degree from Harvard, and a medical degree from Yale. After years as an officer for the Dade county metro police force and later as a state attorney, and a member of the Miami medical examiner’s office, she has decided to leave the prosecutors office and start her own legal practice and investigating detective agency, with a primary goal of helping women in need. Along the way, she acquires a bonding agency with all its baggage ...mainly Eddie Montoya, the former pro star running back, then bouncer now operator of the bonding agency and its chief bounty hunter. The daughter of Cuban immigrants, her father had been a member of the US delegation in Cuba and her mother a Cuban dissident and activist against the Castro government. Her father was forced to leave the island and leave his wife and daughter behind, Catalina years late had been aloud to emigrate, but her mother due to her political activities had been imprisoned in a Castro jail. She had arrived in the US on a freedom flight a Pedro Pan (Peter Pan) flight

It was an emotional departure, her mother and relatives were all there crying and whishing her well. When she arrived at the Kendall Camp for refugees in Florida on August 31, 1961, she arrived alone and, frighten shortly after arrival she was sent along with five other girls to an orphanage in -Wilmington, Del. and remained there for two years, her mother-Carolina Steel arrived in the USA. Her sister Alicia Hernandez arrived in Miami later. Weeks later the Catholic Welfare helped her and her husband, Pepe and daughter Luisa relocate to Wichita, Kansas. Her mom decided that they all needed to be together, so they moved to Wichita where she finished my grade school in St. Joseph Catholic School and graduated from Madonna/Bishop Carroll High School in Wichita. She had been living in Miami since l990.

This would be a case of intrigue, suspense, scandal, and unresolved crimes of kidnapping and murder, that would challenge Catalina Steel’s skills.
It starts in Miami and then follows a twisting route through the Caribbean, South America as well as the small town in Kansas...
Other friends assist her-- carefree , a former police officer and a doctor, the chief medical examiner of the city of Miami as well as friends from her youth.

Although not a doorstopper, its 300 pages are full of fun, facts, and forensics.


I like Mark like a thick book too.
"I like a thick book because it will steady a table, a leather volume to strop a razor and a heavy book to throw at the cat."
— Mark Twain

PLOT
Caty Steel takes on the case of the Spanish consul’s daughter. Caty had found her badly beaten and lying in front of her office steps. Her daughter had been abducted by a couple while she pushed her daughter in a stroller through her Coral Gable neighborhood. At first appearance, it is a case of kidnapping, but as she delves into the case, Caty learns that there is a great deal more behind the adduction. International intrigue, mysterious murders, and global financial crimes are all interwoven in the plot. The setting is Miami with its Latin flavors.


SUB PLOTS
Love interests of Caty disrupt her professional life, and she then has to very all aspects of her life in order to achieve balance, an equilibrium that will help her maintain her sanity. Her strained relations with her mother aggravate the situation. She struggles with a debilitating ailment that