Kids & Family
La Jolla High Grad’s ‘Lost Girls’ Is Finalist for San Diego Book Award
Former Union-Tribune reporter was a finalist last year as well—for "Poisoned Love" on Kristin Rossum case.
When Caitlin Rother launched Lost Girls, her account of how sex-offender John Gardner became the monster who raped and killed, she upset the families of teen victims Chelsea King and Amber Dubois.
On Thursday, Rother’s true-crime book drew a different reaction: praise.
Lost Girls was listed as a finalist for a San Diego Book Award.
Rother, a 1980 La Jolla High School graduate and former Union-Tribune reporter, said she entered an earlier book, Poisoned Love, last year.
“It was chosen as a finalist but lost out to two other books that tied (one on local breweries and one on Chula Vista history), which made me realize that [Local Interest] wasn’t the appropriate category,” Rother said.
She says she spoke with one of the organizers of the prestigious local award, and entered her latest book in the Local Biography/History category.
Other finalists in that category are:
- An American Girl in the Hawaiian Islands: Letters of Carrie Prudence Winter, 1890-1893, Sandra Bonura and Deborah Day, eds.
- I Got a Name: The Jim Croce Story by Ingrid Croce and Jimmy Rock
Malarkey’s Come Early, Stay Late is in the Cookbook and Entertaining category and is joined as a finalist by:
- Photographs and Memories: Recipes from Croce’s Restaurant and Jazz Bar by Ingrid Croce
- Brew Food by Bruce Glassman
- Power Entertaining by Eddie Osterland
In April, Rother also was invited for the first time to take part on a panel at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.
“They asked me to talk about Lost Girls on a panel called Violence on the Page, and our panel was one of 10 chosen by C-SPAN to televise live,” Rother says.
Here is a link to the podcast: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/PanelonV
The 19th annual San Diego Book & Writing Awards will be announced Saturday, June 22, at the AMN Healthcare Building on High Bluff Drive in San Diego.
Local novelist Mark A. Clements, himself a San Diego Book Award winner, is set to be emcee.
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