What do you think?
Rate this book
Awaiting Identification
Wayne County Medical Examiner’s Office, Detroit, Michigan
October 31, 1999.
Five unidentified bodies are brought in to the Wayne County morgue on Halloween night. Although each character is on a separate journey, fate leads each of the five victims to cross paths on the streets of Detroit en route to their tragic demise.
NYC Girl: a former dancer arrives back home from New York City to make amends with her mother and begin to rebuild her life.
Leaf Man: a musician and part-time DJ is on the cusp of his big break with one final, unexpected drug deal to complete before he can go totally straight.
R.I.P.: a career criminal must come up with a large sum of money to pay for his father’s medical expenses, despite his yearning for a crime-free life.
The Zealot: a religious fanatic on a mission from God to rid the city of filth.
Cat Man: a kind and trusting homeless man wanders the city looking for new friends.
Like the city in which it takes place, "Awaiting Identification" is a story of hope, identity, and above all, redemption.
October 31, 1999.
Five unidentified bodies are brought in to the Wayne County morgue on Halloween night. Although each character is on a separate journey, fate leads each of the five victims to cross paths on the streets of Detroit en route to their tragic demise.
NYC Girl: a former dancer arrives back home from New York City to make amends with her mother and begin to rebuild her life.
Leaf Man: a musician and part-time DJ is on the cusp of his big break with one final, unexpected drug deal to complete before he can go totally straight.
R.I.P.: a career criminal must come up with a large sum of money to pay for his father’s medical expenses, despite his yearning for a crime-free life.
The Zealot: a religious fanatic on a mission from God to rid the city of filth.
Cat Man: a kind and trusting homeless man wanders the city looking for new friends.
Like the city in which it takes place, "Awaiting Identification" is a story of hope, identity, and above all, redemption.
295 pages, Paperback
Published May 10, 2018
4 people are currently reading
53 people want to read
About the author
R.J. Fox
3 books29 followersR.J. Fox is the award-winning writer of three published books, several short stories, plays, poems, a memoir, and 15 feature length screenplays.
HIs first feature film as a credited screenwriter is based on his memoir Love & Vodka: My Surreal Adventures in Ukraine. His other books include a novel entitled Awaiting Identification and a collection of essays entitled Tales From the Dork Side.
His work has been published in over 30 literary magazines and journals.
He is also the writer/director/editor of several award-winning short films. His stage directing debut led to an Audience Choice Award at the Canton One-Acts Festival.
Fox graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.A. in English and a minor in Communications and received a Masters of Arts in Teaching from Wayne State University in Detroit, MI.
In addition to moonlighting as a writer, independent filmmaker and saxophonist, Fox teaches film and literature in the Ann Arbor Public Schools, where he uses his own dream to inspire his students to follow their own. He has also worked in public relations at Ford Motor Company and as a newspaper reporter. He resides in Ann Arbor, MI.
His website is rjfoxwriter.wordpress.com. Or follow him on Twitter @foxwriter7.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 24, 2018
The stories of 5 unidentified bodies in the Wayne County morgue masterfully woven so each person encounters each other on Devil’s night in Detroit in the 90’s. I can easily picture the setting - walking down Gratiot and Jefferson, old Tiger Stadium, the People Mover, the Renaissance Center, Joe Louis fist, etc... Sad stories of the homeless and unwanted.
November 16, 2017
R.J. Fox has composed a cinematic ode to the gritty streets of Detroit that is both haunting and powerful. The lives of his characters, subtly intertwined throughout the tale, converge on a satisfying collision course by novel's end and make Awaiting Identification a unique and indelible ride. I highly recommend you take the ride yourself.
September 3, 2018
In 1999, R. J. Fox read an article in the Detroit Free Press titled “Mystery bodies awaiting identification.” The article shared physical descriptions of six individuals found dead in Detroit who remained unidentified in the Wayne County Morgue.
Nineteen years later, Fox’s fictionalized account of characters based on five of the unclaimed bodies became the novel, Awaiting Identification.
In the novel, five bodies are brought into the Wayne County Medical Examiner’s Office on October 31, 1999. Known only as Jane Doe or John Doe, these characters are given the monikers NYC Girl, Leaf Man, R.I.P., Zealot, and Cat Man, all of whom died on October 30 — known in Detroit as Devil’s Night — after unintentionally crossing paths and making a fleeting impact on each other while seeking redemption in their individual lives.
Fox gives each character a complex backstory that explains how he or she ended up at St. Andrew’s Hall, Detroit’s flagship nightclub known for its basement rap battles where Eminem’s career began.
After failing to make it as a dancer in the Big Apple, NYC Girl returns to Detroit grappling with an unplanned pregnancy and hoping to make amends with her mother. Leaf Man is an aspiring techno DJ whose gig at St. Andrew’s Hall is his motivator to end his career selling drugs and to focus on his music. R.I.P. is a desperate thug who needs money for his sick father’s expensive prescriptions. The Zealot is a pale-faced man who hands out religious pamphlets and proselytizes God’s wrath to anyone within earshot. Cat Man calls himself an urban nomad who wanders the city with a kitten in his pocket in hopes of making new friends, while suffering memory loss of his former life.
“Being homeless certainly didn’t make Cat Man’s life any easier. Not that he ever regarded himself as homeless. He regarded himself as an urban nomad and took great pride in the city he called home. When he picked up after others, he felt both a sense of duty and fulfillment and was hopeful that one day, others would follow suit.”
While the characters, on the surface, appear most concerned with themselves, they each have moments of kindness toward the others they encounter, revealing that their surface-level mistrust of others is deeply rooted in fear.
For instance, when NYC Girl contemplates suicide on the bridge leading to Belle Isle, Leaf Man stops her and shows her compassion. What she doesn’t know is he is on his way to picking up the last stash of drugs he will ever sell. Their moment together is tender, however, and it changes her outlook on her situation; we see a moment of optimism, even hope, from her for the first time.
“All it took was for her to stand on the precipice of death to realize that she wanted life. She was going to keep her unborn child and return to her mother, who she now understood in ways she never before had: once upon a time, her mother had given her a chance at life and did the best she could under unbelievably difficult circumstances. Both were born into the same hell. Now, it was her chance to try to make things better.”
The novel’s plot accelerates through the events of the night as we get closer to each character’s imminent death. Detroit in 1999 is the larger contextualized character of the book, and we see that it is the city that suffers the most. Arson, violence, drugs, poverty, desperation, and homelessness leave her downtrodden and gritty in the aftermath. While Detroit appears as a dark underworld on the surface, it is pulsing to the beat of techno music and stubborn in its strength.
Nineteen years later, Fox’s fictionalized account of characters based on five of the unclaimed bodies became the novel, Awaiting Identification.
In the novel, five bodies are brought into the Wayne County Medical Examiner’s Office on October 31, 1999. Known only as Jane Doe or John Doe, these characters are given the monikers NYC Girl, Leaf Man, R.I.P., Zealot, and Cat Man, all of whom died on October 30 — known in Detroit as Devil’s Night — after unintentionally crossing paths and making a fleeting impact on each other while seeking redemption in their individual lives.
Fox gives each character a complex backstory that explains how he or she ended up at St. Andrew’s Hall, Detroit’s flagship nightclub known for its basement rap battles where Eminem’s career began.
After failing to make it as a dancer in the Big Apple, NYC Girl returns to Detroit grappling with an unplanned pregnancy and hoping to make amends with her mother. Leaf Man is an aspiring techno DJ whose gig at St. Andrew’s Hall is his motivator to end his career selling drugs and to focus on his music. R.I.P. is a desperate thug who needs money for his sick father’s expensive prescriptions. The Zealot is a pale-faced man who hands out religious pamphlets and proselytizes God’s wrath to anyone within earshot. Cat Man calls himself an urban nomad who wanders the city with a kitten in his pocket in hopes of making new friends, while suffering memory loss of his former life.
“Being homeless certainly didn’t make Cat Man’s life any easier. Not that he ever regarded himself as homeless. He regarded himself as an urban nomad and took great pride in the city he called home. When he picked up after others, he felt both a sense of duty and fulfillment and was hopeful that one day, others would follow suit.”
While the characters, on the surface, appear most concerned with themselves, they each have moments of kindness toward the others they encounter, revealing that their surface-level mistrust of others is deeply rooted in fear.
For instance, when NYC Girl contemplates suicide on the bridge leading to Belle Isle, Leaf Man stops her and shows her compassion. What she doesn’t know is he is on his way to picking up the last stash of drugs he will ever sell. Their moment together is tender, however, and it changes her outlook on her situation; we see a moment of optimism, even hope, from her for the first time.
“All it took was for her to stand on the precipice of death to realize that she wanted life. She was going to keep her unborn child and return to her mother, who she now understood in ways she never before had: once upon a time, her mother had given her a chance at life and did the best she could under unbelievably difficult circumstances. Both were born into the same hell. Now, it was her chance to try to make things better.”
The novel’s plot accelerates through the events of the night as we get closer to each character’s imminent death. Detroit in 1999 is the larger contextualized character of the book, and we see that it is the city that suffers the most. Arson, violence, drugs, poverty, desperation, and homelessness leave her downtrodden and gritty in the aftermath. While Detroit appears as a dark underworld on the surface, it is pulsing to the beat of techno music and stubborn in its strength.
July 19, 2018
In a nutshell, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, set in Detroit on Devil's Night, 1999, with a dash of Slacker. It tends to oversell the grittiness, in an apparent effort to make the redemption story arc appear that much more miraculous.
January 6, 2020
Great concept. There are some things about the book that are hard to accept for a Detroiter, but they are minor issues. I can't buy the details. If this were to made into a film, I think animation or rotoscoped would work best, because it would put the narrative into the abstract.
July 7, 2018
Whole, tragic, beautifully written characters. Set in Detroit before it’s current “Renaissance” this book is dark and lonely in all the right places.
November 1, 2020
It was dark at times, but well written and gives a different perspective than what one might think.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews