The Power to Live

Two innocent sisters from Sinaloa, taken by human traffickers to California, are separated when one is sold to a new master in Colorado. During each sister's desperate search for the other they learn their bond is stronger than the evil men who control their lives. They learn that many possess the power to kill. But only one learns of an even greater, more elusive power. The power to live.

Characters:
Lozen and Elizabeth.
Sisters. During a minor skirmish in their father's drug war, they are taken as POWs. Treated as chattel, they are smuggled into California and forced into the sex slave trade. When one is sold to a new master in Colorado, they are separated. But their bond proves stronger than the evil men, on both sides of the border, who barter with their lives.

Napolita.
Smuggled across the border with Lozen and Elizabeth and sold to the same club in San Francisco. She grows close like a sister, but when the two blood sisters are separated and embark on separate, desperate searches for each other, Napolita is caught in the middle. She is slowly pulled apart by her circumstances until she is left on the pavement, bleeding and alone.

O'Groghan.
The top of a criminal empire who could snap your neck with one hand, if that's what it takes.

Marcos.
Club owner, crime boss, and slave master. He owns Lozen, Elizabeth, Napolita, and many other girls in his San Francisco club. He thinks he rules his little world but when he sells Lozen and Elizabeth and the transfer goes awry, he discovers how wrong he is.

Richard von Broughton.
Doctor. He worked as a surgeon, sometimes skillfully but oftentimes not, for decades. Upon forced retirement, his thirst for money supplants whatever thirst he had, decades previously, for compassion and humanity. Now he will cut out your eyes and your heart between martinis, avec plaisir.

Nancy.
A nurse who hands him the scalpel. Vestiges of her maternal instincts remain but they don't fare well in the battle raging inside of her between these instincts and her lust for money.

Samantha.
Kidnapped at 12 and enslaved by Marcos. All her teen years are spent in servitude. As she grows from a girl into a woman, whatever thoughts of resistance she may have once harbored recede until, by her nineteenth birthday, she is Marcos' madam and keeps the new girls in line for him. She is repaid in a way she could never imagine.

Bowery.
A 300-pound security chief who keeps the girls in line for Marcos. He maneuvers his bulk with dexterity and skill, but would really just like a damn pair of pants.

Chase and Serio.
Low level soldiers in Marcos' organization. They are responsible for the transfer of Lozen, Napolita, and Samantha to their new owner. When they bungle the job, they are sacrificed without regret.

Steve.
Works at his dad's roadside barbecue joint in Nevada. His vision passes through the ultraviolet ugliness that swarms around Lozen and Napolita. It is a wavelength he is not equipped to see. Instead, he sees the two girls for what they are, what they should be, and what they may become.

Read how their lives all collide during Lozen's and Elizabeth's desperate search for each other. Read of the many who possess the power to kill, and the one with an even greater, more elusive power. The power to live.