No Place Like Home

by Keith Hellwig

When a prison officer known only as "the Captain" is taken hostage while on the job, it sets a chain of events in motion. Through flashbacks, readers learn about the characters' pasts and get an insider's view of day-to-day routines inside a state prison, which is anything but routine even on a normal day.
No Place Like Home provides a realistic look at prison life - not the glamorized, action-filled perspective shown in movies and television. Thanks to Keith Hellwig's decades of experience in the field, the book challenges what the public thinks it knows about the people who live and work in prison - officers and inmates alike. Correctional officers are not stereotypical brutes, liquor-swilling fools or action heroes; they are ordinary men and women performing their duties. Likewise, inmates aren't brilliant masterminds or monsters; they are flawed human beings who have made mistakes. In reality, officers and inmates share a simple to go home at the end of the day.
The author invites readers to step into the world of prison life, realizing the humanity not only of the inmates but also of the officers who guide and protect them, told from the perspective of someone who has been there.

Keith Hellwig has served in law enforcement and corrections for more than 35 years with county and state agencies, eventually rising to the rank of captain. He worked in three correction facilities and is currently a line captain at a state maximum security facility after a brief stint of retirement. Keith has been on hostage extraction teams, emergency response units, cell extraction teams and hostage negotiation teams, and he led a sniper team. He taught hostage survival skills and communications techniques at the Corrections Training Academy.
Although No Place Like Home is his first book, Keith has published work in newspapers and professional publications. He and his wife have been married for more than 35 years and have two daughters and one granddaughter.

220 pages, Paperback

First published May 9, 2014

Reviews

[Christine Conrad · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is written by a man I know and who I respect. His books have given me an open perspective of the job my husband does. The way Keith writes is descriptive to the point that you can imagine yourself there through the whole book and understand and intimately know every player in the book.

[Sherri Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have just started my 20th year in Corrections, six of those as a Sergeant. I do not believe in bringing my work home, therefore, I do not discuss my day with my loved ones. After reading "No Place Like Home" I have decided that this is book I will pass on to my family as a must read. Rather than relying on television to provide them with a misinterpretation of what we in Corrections face daily, this book can detail more of what happens behind the walls, in a building of intense negativity. You followed the Captain, you knew his thoughts, you knew his family. But you also understood more important facts. In life, there are choices we must make. What is the right decision for each predicament. You understand that you don't always get what you give from others. If you don't get anything else from this book, get that the Captain had more than one family to think about...everyday

[Bob B · Rating 1 out of 5]

Retired Co who hated it