In one of Miami's few upscale suburban high schools, a solid young tenth grader went out for nearly every athletic team, and his success was stunning. As early as ninth grade they were writing about him. Vin Mannix, a sports writer for the now defunct South Dade News Leader, wrote, "The staggering fact about this youngster is this: Except for last season's championship match, DeCubas has NEVER wrestled beyond the first period the last two years. He has pinned everyone he faced." The Miami Herald In a searing examination of modern society's thirst for drugs and the folly of the official drug war, THE MIAMI OUTLAW: KID TO KINGPIN mixes meticulous historical research, investigative reporting, and anthropological detail to illuminate the origins of a few young men's quest for riches and their willingness to do almost anything to get them. In doing so Sherouse sets them within a landscape of South Florida's other societal woes in the years just after Vietnam. The result is a tour de force of history and storytelling combined with a plaintive cry for understanding. The author is revealing a story he helped create, he nurtured the protagonist in the beginning of a lifelong journey that led to his envelopment in the criminal underworld of three continents. THE MIAMI OUTLAW: KID TO KINGPIN dismantles myths as it moves from the naïve optimism of Just Say No through the treacherous ripoff world of Miami's hungry criminals. Sherouse follows the dizzying paths young men choose for immediate gratification through an upward spiral leading them to cocaine shipments of over 10,000 lbs. Throughout, the story animates a world often sloughed off to pink flamingoes and fancy cars; its emboldened characters -drug smugglers, ripoff-men, government careerists, and fools, dance about living life alongside a parallel universe of normality. Drawing from years of research, interviews, a decade living the life, and declassified records revealed for the first time, Dr. Sherouse also presents a richly human account of an evolution in our nation's view on drugs. Sherouse's prose does exactly what the best history or anthropology writing does-it takes the familiar and shows us another side; it takes the unfamiliar and lets us see inside. His scope is omnivorous-Sherouse is dazzling in his research and due-diligence. This is a book about connections between people and culture, people and history, people and the transnational economy. Sherouse pulls together vast threads of an expanding story and what emerges is disquieting. The Saga is an epic filled with a poignant sense of discovery in a coming of age tale gone awry: a true American tragedy. On an October afternoon in 2003, Sherouse, on his way home from lecturing at Florida International University, received a startling piece of news. Staring up from a newspaper rack was his best friend in a very familiar pose, a photo taken at wrestling practice years before; Alex DeCubas had finally been caught, some thought that would never happen. Looking at multiple life-sentences, the only person DeCubas could rely upon was his childhood friend and Sherouse went into gear finding an attorney who might be able to work magic: on a pauper's and a prisoner's budget. So a bizarre and intense relationship was renewed-that friendship morphed into a shrewd game of cat-and-mouse with Sherouse on the outside gathering intelligence for US Customs and the DEA while DeCubas gave up an encyclopedic knowledge of Cartel lifethey struggled in an attempt to ameliorate Alex's 30-year sentence. During those years Scott was living down the street from the prison to expedite their plan. Part history, part mystery, part memoir, part mea culpa; THE MIAMI OUTLAW: KID TO KINGPIN weaves a spellbinding tale of avarice and deceit with a deeply personal inquiry into the slippery disposition of truth,

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