What happens when you must defend what you love most from your very dearest? 

Mariana Sánchez Celis has traveled the world as a pianist trained at the Juilliard School of Music. But when her mother has a stroke and her beloved uncle suddenly disappears, Mariana must put her life on hold to return to her home in Ayotlan, Mexico.

She soon discovers her town is no longer the place she remembers. Ayotlan’s beaches, sea turtle colonies, and historic center are decimated under decades of neglect and abuse. What part did her late father have in this? And could it be related to her uncle’s disappearance?

When Fernanda Lucero, a member of the indigenous Concáac people, convinces Mariana to join her sea turtle and architectural conservation projects, the deepening love between Mariana and Fernanda threatens to put them both further in harm’s way. This, together with the web of secrets Mariana unravels, stands to radically transform her and her family’s fate.

Arribada is the story of a well-to-do woman pushed to confront her role in environmental and social injustice. It is the saga of a family faced with the realization that their comfortable position rests, beyond a strong work ethic, on crimes against what they hold dearest: the natural world, their town, and their loved ones.

In Arribada a young woman faces her mother’s wrath when she falls in love with an indigenous woman. The story includes sea turtle hunters and a sea turtle hunting ban; there is a missing uncle; a doting mother who commits the worst transgression; and a nanny with a secret. Some have called the book a mystery; others a romance; others a family saga, and others yet, a historical novel. I think it is a little of all.

ISBN 978-1-947976-31-3 5.5x8.5 hardcover with dust jacket approx. 224 pp.