Who is “Sweet Mary?”
The worst week of Mary Guevara’s life began like any other late summer
week in Miami… stifling hot. Eager to shake the debris of a bad divorce, she’s making a decent home for herself and her young son, Max, and hitting her stride in a brand-new career at a time when business is in the dumps. A Realtor for a boutique real estate agency in Miami, she wonders what kind of fool would take up real estate when everybody else is hanging it up?
Only the queen of bad timing…
Just as she’s finally moving along at a nice clip, her world is thrown into a tailspin. A strange home invasion turns into a case of mistaken identity—The United States Drug Enforcement Agency tags her as a sought-after drug trafficker. The feds think she’s Maria Guevara Portilla, a fugitive, foreign-born drug queen. She’s charged with conspiracy to distribute cocaine… unfathomable amounts of cocaine.
Mary grasps for answers — why is this happening to her? She was born in the United States. She has a Psych degree from Florida International University; she’s a top-seller; she’s a mother. How can she be a notorious drug queen from Colombia?
After she is released on a technicality, Mary fully expects to return to her old life. The truth is far from her expectations, however. Her ex-husband has gotten a court order that awards him sole custody of their son, her boss sends her home until the hype settles, the PTA moms snub her, her reputation is shot.
Not one to back down from a challenge, Mary takes matters into her own hands. Just as the Feds search for Portilla, Mary searches for the return of her old life. She makes it her mission to find the woman, the “Bad Mary,” and bring her to justice. As long as the fugitive is out there, Mary knows she will have to live under a cloud of suspicion.
In order to find her woman, she must call upon her shady ex-flame as her usher into Miami ’s underworld. She embarks on a state-wide hunt that takes her from the underbelly of her hometown to the tourist-filled Keys where connected hoodlums lurk inside pastel-colored houses to the sleepy, cookie-cutter town of Malabar where Bad Mary hides.
When she finally catches up with Portilla, Mary comes to face with a woman she’s sure will be her exact opposite. But she’s wrong. Portilla has much more in common with her than she knows, forcing Mary to reshuffle her plan in an emotional tug of war which tests her mettle and her heart.
