By James Matheson | jmatheson@alextimes.com

Standing in the shower washing off Reece’s blood, it was all coming back, the horror of that day, the sadness that had stalked all of us since. Surviving that nightmare together connected Reece and me in a way neither of us could explain.

Cheryl Reed, a local author, brings readers into the minds of three conflicting perspectives and through layers of mental hardships resulting from gun violence in her new novel, “Map Of My Escape,” which details school shooting survivors who remain haunted by the cruelty of their youth 13 years after the fact.

The barbarity the characters in Reed’s novel withstood during their impressionable years leads to tangled romances, suspicious deaths and a slew of misunderstandings and debacles years down the line.

“There’s all these triangular conflicts,” Reed said. “This isn’t about kids, it’s really about adult trauma and the mental effects of something that happened to them when they were at a formative stage.”

Reed, a former crime reporter, Fulbright Scholar and professor, used her own firsthand encounters with violent crime to write a novel that comments on the variance of political issues and healing nature of humans.

“A lot of journalists cover school shootings, but then what happens after that? What’s the long-term effect that all these shootings are having on kids who grow up, who survive? There’s a lot of survivor’s guilt. There’s trauma. There’s [post-traumatic stress disorder]. There’s anger, bitterness, loss, grief,” Reed said. “It’s all mixed in there. The book is really not about [the shooting]; it’s about what happens afterwards.”

Reed started writing her second novel and third book in 2015 while teaching journalism at Northern Michigan University. Reed said working in Marquette, Michigan, inspired the setting of “Map Of My Escape.”

Reed had also been traveling to the Apostle Islands off the coast of Wisconsin. The experiences she gained there gave birth to the islands featured in the book. These imaginary islands are named for a different type of scholar from the Bible: the “Disciple Islands” off the coast of Michigan.

“I thought the [Upper Peninsula of Michigan] was a really interesting place and I spent a lot of time researching it,” Reed said. “I thought if someone wanted to escape the world and their life, they could go to this island. Who could track them down?”

Reed grew up in Michigan and had her first photography internship outside of Washington, D.C. for a Northern Virginia journal. After working in several other newsrooms across the country, Reed spent most of her journalism career as an editor at the Chicago Sun- Times while living on the south side of Chicago.

“I covered a lot of death. Often I was the first person to arrive on someone’s doorstep to tell the story of the person who had died,” Reed said. “Often they were drug addicts, or they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. I had a real duty to tell the last story and to give them their fair shake in terms of who they were.”

Reed then went abroad as a Fulbright Scholar. Her recent research in Central Asia and Eastern Europe included interviewing 180 imprisoned journalists who had some level of media reprisals in post-Soviet countries or under authoritarian regimes.

Upon completion of her research, Reed moved to Old Town in 2023. She also has a home in the Northern Neck of Virginia.

Reed attended the University of Missouri School of Journalism for her bachelor’s degree, traveled to the Ohio State University for her master’s in journalism and then to Northwestern University for her master’s in fine arts.

As a recent Alexandrian, Reed said the Port City did not play a significant role in the motivation of the book. She did, however, say the Commonwealth of Virginia – more specifically the Northern Neck – delivered certain qualities she knew her third book needed.

“Some of the characters in the book and this feel of a small town where people all know each other and they all know about each other, that is definitely true [in the northern neck],” Reed said. “That fed into it.”

The novel is dedicated to Reed’s son, Nick. Her husband, Greg, was the first reader and editor of “Map Of My Escape.”

Reed has won a dozen journalism and writing awards, including the Chicago Writers Book of the Year in 2018 for her book, “Poison Girls” in the category of traditional fiction.

In addition to “Map of My Escape” and “Poison Girls,” Reed’s other book is titled “Unveiled: The Hidden Lives of Nuns.”