In 1961, young, black, eighth-grade dropout Wilbert Rideau despaired of his small-town future in the segregated deep south of America. He set out to rob the local bank and after a bungled robbery he killed the bank teller, a fifty-year-old white female. He was arrested and gave a full confession.
When we meet Rideau he has just been sentenced to death row, from where he embarks on an extraordinary journey. He is imprisoned at Angola, the most violent prison in America, where brutality, sexual slavery and local politics confine prisoners in ways that bars alone cannot. Yet Rideau breaks through all this and finds hope and meaning, becoming editor of the prison magazine, going on to win national journalism awards.
Full of gritty realism and potent in its evocation of a life condemned, Rideau goes far beyond the traditional prison memoir and reveals an emotionally wrought and magical conclusion to his forty-four years in prison.
- 384 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
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Information
Publisher
Profile BookseBook ISBN
9781847654649
Year
2011Table of contents
- Cover Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Preface
- Contents
- Author’s Note
- Maps
- 1 Ruination 1942–1961
- 2 Tribulation 1962–1970
- 3 Solitary January 1972
- 4 The Jungle 1973–1975
- 5 Mentor 1976
- 6 Crackdown 1976
- 7 Truth Behind Bars 1977–1981
- 8 Disillusion 1981–1986
- 9 Soldiering On 1986–1990
- 10 Hope 1990–1994
- 11 Censorship 1995–2001
- 12 Behind Enemy Lines 2001–2005
- 13 Deliverance 2005
- 14 Deliverance 2005
- Acknowledgments
- Index
- Foot Note