Julia Reynolds: Gang Life and Gang Death In California

Julia Reynolds never planned on becoming an expert on gang violence. But as a reporter covering towns like Salinas, CA, she found the carnage hard to ignore, and she wondered why so many young men were keen for a career that often ends in an early grave or a prison cell. After a decade of getting to know gang members, their families and anti-gang law enforcement officials, she's produced a vivid portrait of life and death in one of California's most notorious crime organizations. Drawing on her own first-hand reporting as well as police surveillance tapes and court discovery documents, her new book "Blood in the Fields: Ten Years Inside California's Nuestra Familia Gang" has a novelistic, you-are-there immediacy while remaining resolutely factual.