Why would five convicted murderers offer a news reporter unfettered access into their life after spending decades behind bars?
Radio reporter Nancy Mullane uses her journalistic skill as a guiding force to give a unique perspective on how California’s criminal justice system works.
“Life after Murder: Five Men in Search of Redemption” is an eye opening and honest explanation of how a paroled murderer can live in the state of happiness and bliss while suffering from fear and anxiety.
She sifts through the emotional journey that these men and their families endure, writing; “No one really goes to prison alone. An invisible rope stretches from the heart and mind of a prisoner out through the bars of his cell, up into the sky, over the hills and water, dropping back down to earth far away, inside the lives of the people left behind. As the years pass – five, 10, 20, 30 – the fibers of that rope become frayed, and sometimes they snap.”
Mullane goes into extensive detail uncloaking the events that catapulted these men into murder, how imprisonment drove them to transform their thinking, what it feels like – that first day out, the challenges that parole imposes on an ex-offender, and what it means for a man to become self-sufficient.
Mullane took five years to study and decode the mysteries behind prison culture – simultaneously navigating through the intricacies of state government in order to tell a story about the mechanical life that these men left in their wake. “…if anyone knows how to pace himself, how to take one step at a time and be patient, it is a man who has served an indeterminate sentence,” Mullane explains.
She becomes more than just a storyteller as she tags along with Don Cronk, Phillip Sieler, Eric Rameriz, Jesse Reed, and Richard Real to show that their deeds in service to the community and survival are rooted in redemption. The book is scheduled to be released this June.
Juan’s Book Review
