Pulitzer Winner and Former Shoreline Resident Reading "Blood of the Reich" at Third Place Tonight

“Blood of the Reich,” the latest work of fiction from former Shoreline resident and Pulitzer Prize-winning Seattle Times reporter William Dietrich, is an epic adventure with the heroes in a race with the Nazis reminiscent of “Raiders of  the Lost Ark.”

Dietrich will read from “Blood of the Reich,” at 7 p.m. at the Den at in Lake Forest Park. A hardback copy goes for $25.99.

While, Dietrich’s fiction is his current focus, his first book the “The Final Forest,” about the standoff between environmentalists and loggers over the northern spotted owl in the late 1980s, was a work of nonfiction.

In 1994, he went to Antarctica for the Seattle Times for a story and heard of a Nazi expedition there and wanted to write a nonfiction book about it. But he couldn’t find a publisher and instead wrote and later published his first work of fiction, “Ice Reich” in 1998,  based on the true story of Nazi exploration into Antarctica. He now has now developed a following with 10 books of historical fiction, including works on the Roman Empire and the Napoleonic period in Europe.

Like “Ice Reich”, “Blood of the Reich,” is based on a true story, this time about a Nazi expedition abroad into the heart of Tibet, where the current Dalai Lama is still a young boy in 1938.

Dietrich’s characters include Kurt Raeder, a zoologist and academic who is a member of the SS and who is seeking a secret energy source to help Henrich Himmler and the SS prove their Aryan racial theories and prevail in World War II.

The heroes are American zoologist Benjamin Hood, who has been recruited by the U.S. government to pursue the Germans. The story alternates between World War II and the present.  Rominey Pickett is modern Seattleite whose car is blown up and is thrust into the action and is joined by a Seattle Times investigative reporter as she tries to discover who she really is.

“It was little tricky to organize and a little tricky to pull off,” Dietrich said, but he believes it works.

Dietrich travels to places he writes about and spent time in Tibet observing a what he called a medieval culture affected by modern Chinese capitalism.  

These types of cultural contrasts including the ones between the Nazis and Tibetans are what fascinate Dietrich.

None of Dietrich’s works of fiction have been made into movies, yet—“I keep being told epics are expensive movies to make,” he said, but he hopes a producer, star or director takes a shot someday.

Still, Dietrich, who lives in Anacortes now, sells about 100,000 copies of each of his fiction books.

“It’s a good living,” he said. “I do better than most authors but I’m a long way from doing as well as the superstars.”