"Tells the story of Marie Hamilton and her volunteer work in the Pennsylvania prison system. For more than thirty years, Marie used principles of nonviolence and restorative justice to create unique programs for inmates"--Provided by publisher.
Grace Behind Bars shares the true and dramatic account of how Bo Mitchell, businessman and chaplain for the Denver Nuggets, inexplicably ended up in federal prison only to find God’s true freedom behind bars. Ironically, it’s in a six-by-nine-foot cell that God begins to free this driven Christian leader from his prison of performance and success. In the end, Bo realizes that God’s love is a gift, not something he must earn. But there’s more to the story: Just before Bo enters prison, his wife, Gari, becomes incapacitated by a brain illness and enters her own prison of clinical depression. Readers will see how the couple struggled together as their world fell apart, yet ultimately grew closer to each other and God behind the bars of their trials. This story will not only inspire and encourage readers, it will show them how they, too, can find spiritual freedom in life’s “prisons” if they choose to see God’s hand in their lives.
Paul A. Lavallee is a romantic when writing or talking about small town New England. He is an occasional contributor to a weekly newspaper publication, writing on local issues as well as timely articles of interest. He was born and still lives in the heart of the Blackstone River Valley, where America's industrial revolution began. A Marine veteran of the Korean War, Mr. Lavallee's recollection of growing up in a small mill town during the war years of the 1940's, along with his later experiences at Parris Island, and then in war-ravaged Korea in the 1950's, all tended to inspire him to write his first novel, Rattle of the Looms. That novel was and still is so well received that a sequel seemed imperative. Thus comes the revisiting of the old mill town, Northcross, along with the eeriness of Emery Sibley's mansion, the few vaguely familiar faces over at Felix Morrell's bar, as well as the folks who happen to be still around town in 1982, twenty-eight years after the close of the original novel that ended in 1954. Semper Fi
January 29, 2015. In a small central Pennsylvania town, Deb Gruel awoke to early morning knocking on her front door. A small band of police officers entered her home, searched it and questioned her husband, Dave, while her sons slept upstairs. Two days later, Dave was charged with multiple felony counts related to child pornography. The next 18 months would become a nightmare for Deb and her family as they weathered attacks on their character, social standing, finances and mental health. Raised to believe in the power of God to overcome, Deb wondered: Could anything good come from this? God answered in a surprising way.
THE GRIPPING DI HELEN GRACE THRILLER FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR M. J. ARLIDGE 'Addictive. Will have readers scrabbling at the pages as feverishly as an innocent clawing at a prison cell door' DAILY EXPRESS 'Gripping, compulsive and addictive - I read it in 24 hours' 5***** READER REVIEW _______ Prison is no place for a detective . . . Helen Grace was one of the country's best police investigators. Now she's behind bars with the killers she caught. Framed for murder . . . She knows there is only way out: Stay alive until her trial and somehow prove her innocence. Locked up with a killer . . . But when a mutilated body is found in the cell next door, Helen fears her days are numbered. A murderer is on the loose. Now she must find them. Before she's next . . . 'A great set-up, and Arlidge keeps the tension ratcheted up throughout' Sunday Times Crime Club _______ PRAISE FOR M.J. ARLIDGE: 'Helen Grace is one of the greatest heroes to come along in years' Jeffery Deaver 'The new Jo Nesbo' Judy Finnigan 'Fast paced and nailbitingly tense . . . gripping' Sun 'DI Helen Grace is a genuinely fresh heroine . . . MJ Arlidge weaves together a tapestry that chills to the bone' Daily Mail
"Jojo Godinez grew up in L.A. County surrounded by gangs. The night he joined one, he swore to represent his gang until death. Fights, shootings, and arrests followed, but his love of violence waned through the years as more and more of his friends died around him. Amid the bloodshed, he met a homegirl, Dalia. At just 18 years old, they married in Vegas, but their honeymoon was interrupted when a crime Jojo committed brought him into court and eventually into a 45-years-to-life sentence. On the day he was found guilty, Dalia gave birth to their son. Suicidal, Jojo lost himself in the evils of the jail, trying to forget his former life and even his family. It was during a stint in solitary confinement that he came to terms with his need for change. He asked God for forgiveness and resolved to never fight again. Jojo's nonviolent rebellion against the prison culture of hatred and racism was consistently met with death threats but he was willing to risk everything for his newfound faith. In prison after prison, Jojo spread peace, while his wife, Dalia, and their son faithfully waited for the day he finally came home. The powerful true story of Jojo Godinez shows the incredible transformation of a man once written off as nothing more than a criminal."
Prisons That Could Not Hold weaves together diary entries, letters, and interviews to provide a very human portrait of the evolution of an individual activist and the development of contemporary "movement" philosophy. The centerpiece of this volume is the acclaimed Prison Notes, a powerful account of the twenty-seven days Barbara Deming and thirty-five others spent in an Albany, Georgia, jail during their Canada-to-Cuba Walk for Peace in 1963 and 1964. Demanding that black demonstrators and white demonstrators be able to walk together, the peace marchers were imprisoned, leading many in the group to fast and employ other nonviolent techniques of protest. Their presence and discipline had a lasting effect on the Albany Movement and other nonpacifist civil rights groups in the South. The remainder of the book relates Deming's final protest walk some twenty years later in 1983 with the Seneca Women's Peace Encampment, a group of women-only peace marchers scheduled to walk from Seneca, New York, the site of the first Women's Rights Declaration in 1848, to the missile base in Romulus, New York. This nonviolent march in honor of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and other feminist heroines was interrupted by protestors. Deming and fifty-three other women were arrested and spent five days in a Waterloo, New York, jail. These events are told in "A New Spirit Moves Among Us," an essay written in letter form to a friend in defense of women-only actions, an interview with Deming conducted after her release from jail, and a statement of purpose issued from jail by the Waterloo Fifty-Four. As Grace Paley notes in her introduction, Prisons That Could Not Hold is "the story of two walks undertaken to help change the world without killing it. Barbara Deming was an important member of both. Twenty years of her brave life lie between them. . . . That difference between the two walks measures a development in movement history and also tells the distance Barbara traveled in those twenty years."
The controversial New York City police commissioner and New York Times bestselling author of The Lost Son shares the story of his fall from grace and the effects of his incarceration on his views of the American justice system. Bernard Kerik was New York City’s police commissioner during the 9/11 attacks, and became an American hero as he led the NYPD through rescue and recovery efforts of the World Trade Center. His résumé as a public servant is long and storied, and includes receiving a Medal of Honor. In 2004, Kerik was nominated by George W. Bush to head the Department of Homeland Security. Now, he is a former Federal Prison Inmate known as #84888-054. Convicted of tax fraud and false statements in 2007, Kerik was sentenced to four years in federal prison. Now, for the first time, he talks candidly about what it was like on the inside: the torture of solitary confinement, the abuse of power, the mental and physical torment of being locked up in a cage, the powerlessness. With newfound perspective, Kerik makes a plea for change and illuminates why our punishment system doesn’t always fit the crime. In this extraordinary memoir, Kerik reveals his unprecedented view of the American penal system from both sides: as the jailer and the jailed. With astonishing candor, bravery, and insider’s intelligence, Bernard Kerik shares his fall from grace to incarceration, and turns it into a genuine and uniquely insightful argument for criminal justice reform.