2024 NAIWE Narrative Nonfiction Winner
Author: Frederick Douglass Reynolds
Police detectives’ cases are often entangled with drug abuse, gang violence, homelessness, and even death. One years-long homicide case that stands out for two detectives begins in California in 2008 when five people in a homeless encampment were murdered on the same night.
This account hits on areas of the victims’ lives leading to their deaths: one was sought out for his involvement in the gang culture of drugs and four were just in the wrong place that dreadful night and witnessed a murder. And then there was a sixth murder in the desert many miles away that again was connected to the gang culture of drugs with the ultimate price of death. Within the world of a jailhouse, these murders were used as bragging rights to gain status and to convict.
Written like a story, Saint Bloodbath brings the reader in the scene, allowing the reader to better understand the situations of homeless people and gang members and why they make the choices they do.
Frederick Douglass Reynolds, the author and a retired L.A. County Sheriff’s Homicide Sergeant, is a gifted writer with a vast array of personal experiences to describe with his pen. Saint Bloodbath is an excellent read based on true events that will make you question the humanity of some.
Congratulations, Frederick Douglass Reynolds’s Saint Bloodbath for being a NAIWE 2024 Book Award winner!
Leave a Reply