Homicide is a way of life in Salinas. Scott Wilson's privileged youth ended the night he stared down the barrel of a misfire. The sole survivor to the gangland execution of his older brother during a routine traffic stop. After five years of guilt and self destruction, his life appears to be back on track. His father would disagree. He would never be a cop. Never be part of five generations of law enforcement. Never be like Stephen. Not so long as he hung out with those "losers" from the coffee house with their piercings and tattoos. His new friends never cared that his family were cops and now neither does he. But when his best friend Josh is nearly beaten to death by the same gangsters who murdered his brother, he convinces his new surrogate family it's time to make a stand. To send a message of violence and revenge the gangsters will understand. He never meant for it to go this far. They were just going to teach them a lesson. No one was supposed to get killed. JS Waters brings the gritty violence of street gangs to life from the rural farming community of Salinas, California in the pages of this powerful new crime drama. "J.S. Waters continues the work of Steinbeck to observe with sweeping criticism...-no longer tragedy in the fields, but tragedy in the streets." -Sean Manzano y Labrador, author of Conversations at A War Time Cafe