Fleeting Visions

The motivation behind Fleeting Visions. Years back, in one of our frequent trips to Mexico, my husband and I came in contact with a local travel agent who described the many concerns he’d about the recruitment of very young girls for ill-identified jobs. These were minors placed by the parents in the hands of very unscrupulous people who’d take them north of the border. “Some—actually many, I’m afraid—are caught in prostitution,” he confided to us with dismay, “and I often feel that the parents are aware of the situation.” Prostitution of minors is a constant concern in our society; I thought it would constitute a realistic background for my new fiction, primarily set in London, Ontario, with excursions to Mexico. My protagonist is Louis Saura, the son of two recent immigrants from Mexico. While his saga doesn’t take most of the pages, his spirit permeates the entire novel. Snapshots at the plot. Orphaned at the age of two and raised by a poor and sick uncle, Louis Saura, age seventeen, is caught between two cultures, the Mexican he gets from his family and the Canadian he absorbs in school. He hardly knows what his rights are; he often doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do and has no idea of the help ready available in his community. When his uncle dies, he becomes prey to drug dealer Camilo Estorbar who runs a successful prostitution ring—his sex workers being teenagers brought into the country illegally. As Louis plays cat and mouse with Estorbar, he crosses path with Detective Gordon Stevenson of the London Police Service. Stevenson is investigating the case of a teenage girl brought to the hospital in the middle of the night by an unidentified person. The no-name, no-papers girl shows signs of malnutrition and sexual abuse. Stevenson, known for his keen perception and commitment to fight for justice, makes it his mission to find out who abused the girl. He feels that Louis could be of great help, but Louis avoids him, afraid of getting involved. Young Saura, now eighteen, dreams of making enough money to pay for a trip and get lost in the forests of the north, where, he hopes, he’d be left alone. A tapestry of characters influences the lives of Estorbar, Stevenson, and Louis. Vicente Perdiz, the second in command in the Estorbar’s organization, has an agenda of his own, since he’s looking for his teenage sister, kidnapped two year before; Charles MacMillan, a successful Torontonian business man, approaches Estorbar since he’s searching for his missing daughter; Selina, one of the young prostitutes, stays in contact with Louis, thus endangering his life; Jocelyn Cardel, a pharmacist at the hospital, once a suspect in a drug exchange, gets involved in Stevenson’s work and life. Once Estorbar realizes that Louis represents a severe threat, he doesn’t spare money, means and tricks to get hold of him; Stevenson, on the other hand, is on Estorbar’s tracks, ready for the final confrontation.