Juan Pablo and the Butterflies

After facing a vicious drug cartel in Mexico’s Monarch Butterfly sanctuary, Juan Pablo and his best friend Rocio risk everything and try to escape the cartel’s henchmen—determined to pursue them at all costs—by following the butterflies’ migration all the way to California.

Juan Pablo lives in El Rosario, Mexico’s butterfly sanctuary, where millions of winged creatures gather together in one magical place. It is his home, his life.

He loves his music, the butterflies, and his grandmother, who has fallen fatally ill—which is why he can’t leave, even when a nefarious drug cartel overtakes the town. But the threat of the cartel becomes ever more menacing, finally endangering the life of his best friend Rocio, the girl he loves. In a heroic act of desperation to save her, Juan Pablo poisons eight members of the cartel.

Together, Juan Pablo and Rocio flee, following the instructions his grandmother gave before she took her last breath: Follow the migration of the butterflies, where someone will be waiting for you.

But are they following the wings of freedom? Or death?

JJ Flowers is the author of Juan Pablo and the Butterflies, a Simon & Schuster book.