Scott Cawelti was born and raised in Cedar Falls, Iowa. He taught writing, film, and literature at the University of Northern Iowa (UNI) from 1968-2008, and has written regular opinion columns and reviews for the Waterloo / Cedar Falls Courier since the late 1970s. He played for years in a folk duo with Robert James Waller and still regularly performs as a singer/guitarist/songwriter. Scott continues to teach as an adjunct instructor at UNI.
How could he do that? Murder a brother, his sister-in-law, and his young niece and nephew as they slept in their beds? Jerry Mark was a Peace Corps volunteer, lawyer, 4-H leader, vice-president of his Cedar Falls High School senior class, and certainly a most likely-to-succeed young man when he graduated in 1960.
Sixteen years later he was convicted of four cold-blooded execution-style murders of his own family. How could he? That’s what Brother’s Blood explores. Author Scott Cawelti knew Jerry Mark in high school, interviewed him in prison, and observed his arrest, trial, and conviction with shock and horror.
Mark remains in Iowa’s maximum security prison, still insisting on his innocence. Brother’s Blood reveals what he did and why in convincing and unforgettable detail.
Hearst began writing poetry at age nineteen and eventually wrote thirteen books of poems, a novel, short stories, cantatas, and essays, which gained him a devoted following. Drawing on his experiences as a farmer, Hearst wrote with a distinct voice of rural life and its joys and conflicts.