Leaving Panama's Paradise: A Journey From the Canal Zone to California (Discovered Truth Series)

Raised in the Canal Zone, Panama, Jesse McMillan never planned on leaving the tropical paradise. But signing of the Torrijos–Carter Treaties in 1977 catapulted him from the American territory to California, where he became an investigative reporter. Exposing a Southern California crack cocaine epidemic in 1989, Jesse finds himself enmeshed with an elusive Mexican mafia drug cartel figure. Panama also makes news when the US upends the country hunting down its military dictator, Manuel Noriega, for drug trafficking. Shaking up Jesse’s world in a welcome way and making sparks fly, he reunites with Clare, a girlfriend from the Canal Zone. As Jesse’s romance heats up and he continues his increasingly dangerous investigations, a disturbing and potentially deadly connection between his childhood home in Panama and the Mexican mafia emerges. Jesse races to expose truths, uncovering shocking secrets about Canal Zone friends. In the process, he makes peace with leaving Panama.