A smoothly written memoir steeped in positive reinforcement and hope for the future.
The uplifting story of a convict who beat a life prison sentence through education and dedication.
Entrepreneur Wilson was just a teenager when he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Though a passion for books buoyed his early adolescence in 1990s Washington, D.C., they remained dark days suffused with random thefts and the violent deaths of young friends. When his hardworking mother became embroiled in a severely abusive relationship with a corrupt policeman, the situation forced an angry, embittered Wilson to arm himself and plummet deeper into a life of crime. During an altercation, the author fired a series of panicked shots, killing a man; he was later convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment in Maryland at age 17, hopeless and shunned by his family. “I was young; I was black; I had a record seventeen pages long,” he writes. Wilson candidly shares the eye-opening details of his time in prison with a prose style that moves with directness and refreshingly unfettered honesty. Wilson seamlessly moves from his most downtrodden moments sealed away in prison to the motivational moments when he connected and shared ideas with a fellow lifer, earned his GED and college degrees, and learned multiple languages. Despite years devoted to his education and self-improvement initiatives, numerous courtroom appeals for leniency were denied until, finally, his chance at a new life was granted with a sentence reduction and parole. All of these events, both promising and discouraging, fueled Wilson’s lofty “master plan” and an entrepreneurial spirit that inspired him to cultivate a socially responsible business venture, Barclay Investment Corporation, which matches unemployed Baltimore area residents with clients who have service needs. The author’s passionately written memoir, infused with all the frustrations of making mistakes and seeking atonement, will give hope to readers who find themselves involved, to any degree, with the long road from incarceration to freedom.
A smoothly written memoir steeped in positive reinforcement and hope for the future.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7352-1558-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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