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 dream: 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.