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The city of Salinas California is the birthplace of John Steinbeck and the setting for his epic masterpiece East of Eden but it is also the home of Nuestra Familia one of the most violent gangs in the United States Born in the prisons of California in the late s Nuestra Familia expanded to control drug trafficking and extortion operations throughout the northern half of the state and left a trail of bodies in its wake Award-winning journalist Julia Reynolds tells the gangs story from the inside out following young men and women as they search for a new kind of family quests that usually lead to murder and betrayal Blood in the Fields also documents the history of Operation Black Widow the FBIs questionable decade-long effort to dismantle the Nuestra Familia along with its compromised informants and the turf wars it created with local law enforcement agenciesReynolds uses her unprecedented access to gang members both in and out of prison as well as undercover wire taps depositions and court documents to weave a gripping comprehensive history of this brutal criminal organization and the lives it destroyed.



About the Author

Julia Reynolds

Julia Reynolds is a journalist and author of the narrative nonfiction book, "Blood in the Fields: Ten Years Inside California's Nuestra Familia Gang," published September 2014 by Chicago Review Press.She co-produced and wrote the PBS documentary "Nuestra Familia, Our Family," and has reported on criminal justice and Northern California gangs for more than a decade. She is a staff writer at the Monterey County Herald, and has reported for PBS, the Discovery Channel, Mother Jones, the Nation, NPR, the San Francisco Chronicle, and more.Reynolds was a 2009 Harvard Nieman Fellow focusing on solutions to gang violence, a 2010 Steinbeck Fellow in creative nonfiction, and has been an adjunct professor and researcher for the Center for Conflict Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. She lives in California's Central Coast.



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