Author Bill Loehfelm of New Orleans has recently won the first Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award with his book, "Fresh Kill", placing among over 5,000 entrants from 20 countries. Rejected 25 times before winning the Amazon award, Loehfelm's book was named after the massive garbage dump in Staten  Island where the author grew  up. Written in New Orleans after Katrina, the book is a testament to friends and community, the power of loyalty and forgiveness.

The new author associates his writing in post-Katrina to Harlem Renaissance, Paris after World War I, and the San Francisco of the Beat generation in the 1950s--hours spent writing in the back of New Orlean's  Rue de la Course coffee house which simply would allow smokers. A first book that took him five or six years  to develop from its first step to finished product, it is reviewed as a "tough-minded" book--written as a mystery but is more or less considered a character study of a murdered abusive father, with the son who wanted him dead given the responsibility of finding the culprit.

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