LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. - Oct. 2, 2017 - s4story -- What would you do for love? It's an eternal question that humanity has been trying to answer for millennia. While love manifests in countless ways, it drives us all—to madness, adventure, and into the unknown.

JJ Flowers' Juan Pablo and the Butterflies is a hauntingly beautiful adventure, but one packed full of suspense—The Alchemist meets the Cartel, a new genre the spiritual thriller. Gripped by a "ripped from the headlines" realness, Juan Pablo and the Butterflies elegantly weaves the pressing issues of our modern time: immigration, drug trafficking, and human rights. At its heart, Juan Pablo is about love—the future and Rocio and the past and his abuela—and how love ultimately defines and guides us all.

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 is a gifted classical violinist from El Rosario, Mexico's butterfly sanctuary, where millions of winged creatures gather together in one magical place.

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He loves his music, the butterflies, and his abuela (grandmother), a doctor and naturalist who has fallen fatally ill—and the reason he can't leave 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 must flee, following the instructions his grandmother gave before she took her last breath: Follow the migration of the butterflies through Baja into California and to Pacific Grove, where someone will be waiting for you.

And so Juan Pablo and Rocio flee begin their harrowing journey north. But are they following the wings of freedom? Or courting death?

Kirkus Reviews called the novel "powerful" and said Ms. Flowers delivers a "touching contemporary novel that is … relevant in its treatment of drug-trafficking, immigration, and human rights issues."

According to Booklist, Juan Pablo and the Butterflies provides an "…abundance of heart-pounding action" and it makes this "a page-turner… The story's violence is offset by remembered conversations with abuela—amusing, insightful and spiritual—and the tender relationship between two young adults who have spent their lives together."

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Proceeds from the sale of the book will go to benefit the Gustavo Dudamel Foundation for the arts and music education and Save Our Monarchs for butterfly conservation.

JJ Flowers was once upon a time a best selling romance author (under the name Jennifer Horsman), a playwright, a yogi and a spiritualist, as well as a stanch advocate for the sciences and environmental activist. She currently divides her time between Laguna Beach, CA and Belize.

For review copies of Juan Pablo and the Butterflies, please send an e-mail (specify preference of print or e-book) to jaejflowers@gmail.com

The Gustavo Dudamel Foundation is dedicated to supporting the arts and music education as catalysts in promoting a more compassionate and just society. The Foundation's goal is to partner with organizations around the world in promoting artistic excellence, encouraging access to great art and music, and highlighting musical participation as a key in fostering learning, understanding, and social inclusion.

Save Our Monarchs is a grassroots non-profit organization dedicated to saving the embattled monarch butterflies. The organization distributes Asclepius syriaca seeds (milkweed) to anyone willing to join in the mission to rebuild a monarch butterfly habitat and give them the food they need to survive.