Virginian-Pilot editor Burke and writer Jackson produce a dark epic chronicling the only multiple escape from death row, and the redemption of a man condemned for a killing likely not his own doing, in that rare volume that is at once a taut, gripping true-crime ride and a disturbing indictment of the nether regions of criminal justice. Career criminal Dennis Stockton received a 1983 death sentence for a 1978 murder only tenuously tied to him, and was sent to Mecklenberg, a supposedly —escape-proof— prison, in reality deeply compromised by collusion between cowed guards and convicted killers with nothing to lose. Led by the notoriously vicious Briley brothers, six prisoners pulled off an astounding escape that involved capturing a dozen guards and forcing an officer to simulate a bomb scare; yet Stockton stayed behind, in hopes of proving his innocence in court. Later, he sent his —Death Row Diary— to the authors; his disclosures amplified the escape scandal, and embarrassed officials sent Stockton on a long tour of Virginia’s worst penal institutions. Stockton was executed in 1995 in the midst of growing attention to unearthed discrepancies in his case, and evidence including signed affidavits asserting the real killer’s identity. This grim tale is transformed into something more weighty than mere violent pulp by its audacious portrayals of the prisoners; without minimizing their ghastly deeds, Jackson and Burke evoke their doomed humanity and the strength they needed to survive the elaborate terrors of a death sentence. The centerpiece of the escape plot is rendered authentically, as great ingenuity in the face of desperate odds—an irresistible drama. And Stockton himself emerges memorably, an incorrigible crook transformed through craft and late bravery. Though the authors— prose is brisk and engaging, the generous implication throughout is that this self-taught writer’s perceptions and observations are paramount. Even jaded readers, attentions captured by the pyrotechnical escape plot, will recognize the likely injustice in Stockton’s state-sanctioned fate.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-8129-3206-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Times/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2000
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
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