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by Jessica Housand
Blood Gilt is a transnational crime saga about inheritance, loyalty, and the devastating cost of power.
Alejandro Whitmore Santiago is the reluctant heir to a criminal dynasty forged through war, influence, and bloodshed. Displaced by El Salvador's civil conflict, he is taken from rural poverty into a world of privilege and violence by his estranged father—a U.S. military veteran whose smuggling operation stretches from Central America to the United States.
Years later, while studying art in Florida, Alejandro tries to distance himself from the empire that shaped his life. But political unrest in El Salvador threatens everything his father built, drawing Alejandro back into a system where loyalty is currency, love is leverage, and every relationship carries a price. His fixation on Moni, a fellow student connected to an FBI operation targeting him, entangles him further in a web of surveillance, deception, and shifting allegiance.
Forced to return to El Salvador, Alejandro confronts the fractured family he left behind: a mother driven by revolutionary ambition, siblings divided by resentment and desire, and rivals determined to control the dynasty's future.
As trust collapses and violence escalates, Alejandro must decide whether he can escape his inheritance—or whether the struggle to resist it will cost him what remains of his humanity.
Marked by betrayal, sacrifice, and irreversible choices, Blood Gilt is a haunting exploration of corruption, free will, and the gradual erosion of the soul.
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This information about Blood Gilt was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Jessica Housand, PhD, MPH, MFA, writes psychologically layered fiction exploring power, trauma, obsession, violence, and moral choice. Drawing on backgrounds in psychology, public health, defense, and mental-health research, she is particularly interested in how individuals behave within fractured families, intimate relationships, and systems shaped by conflict and control.
Her poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction have appeared in more than twenty literary journals and anthologies, including War, Literature & the Arts, Split Lip Magazine, New Madrid, Word Riot, and The Malpaís Review. She received second-place fiction awards in competitions sponsored by The Dark Fiction Spotlight and the Space Coast Writers Guild. She also writes for the screen. Her debut novel, Blood Gilt, will be published by Little Studio Films Publishing in July 2026. Visit her website at www.jessicahousand.com.
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