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Book Details An Attack on Campus

Cover of "Patriots" by Will Kane Thompson

Mass killings on school campuses have, unfortunately, become commonplace in American society. Just a week ago today, a shooter opened fire at a Broward County high school – killing 17 people and injuring another 15.

These incidents have left the country divided on whether we need more guns or less guns, better mental health care or harsher responses from governing bodies to red flags, the death penalty or mercy for the killers…

Perhaps no recent work of fiction better handles this subject – and all the gray areas in between the nation’s pretty black-and-white divide – than “Patriots” by Will Kane Thompson.

Due to the frequency of these types of events, Gulf Coast Live had actually booked Thompson weeks ago on the already-relevant subject, but now, South Florida itself is in the process of recovering from the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.

Thompson joins the show to talk about his novel, which details an attack on a South Florida campus that was inspired by Florida Gulf Coast University.

You can read the first seven chapters of “Patriots” for free on the novel’s website.

Rachel Iacovone is a reporter and associate producer of Gulf Coast Live for WGCU News. Rachel came to WGCU as an intern in 2016, during the presidential race. She went on to cover Florida Gulf Coast University students at President Donald Trump's inauguration on Capitol Hill and Southwest Floridians in attendance at the following day's Women's March on Washington.Rachel was first contacted by WGCU when she was managing editor of FGCU's student-run media group, Eagle News. She helped take Eagle News from a weekly newspaper to a daily online publication with TV and radio branches within two years, winning the 2016 Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence Award for Best Use of Multimedia in a cross-platform series she led for National Coming Out Day. She also won the Mark of Excellence Award for Feature Writing for her five-month coverage of an FGCU student's transition from male to female.As a WGCU reporter, she produced the first radio story in WGCU's Curious Gulf Coast project, which answered the question: Does SWFL Have More Cases of Pediatric Cancer?Rachel graduated from Florida Gulf Coast University with a bachelor's degree in journalism.
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