Billy Wayne Sinclair

When I accepted the job to retype a prison memoir for computer input, I was completely unprepared for the story that unfolded as my fingers flew over the keyboard. Sinclair has spent 35 years in the toughest prison in the country. Just as anyone who has lived in a community for that many years, he has seen people, events, and history come and go. With a powerful commitment to not becoming an animal, he carved out a life of service and dedication, both to redeem himself for his crime and to create a meaningful existence where none seemed to exist for so many. Graphic (but not gratuitous) violence spills throughout much of the first half of the book. The characters are vivid and sometimes inspiring—Swede who was on death row and gave him classics to read, and the lifer who died trying to save young prisoners from the inevitable rape that awaited them at Angola. This is a worthy read. (January 2001) Update (January 2012): Sinclair was paroled in 2006. He and his wife have written another book, Capital Punishment: An Indictment by a Death-Row Survivor, which was published in 2009.… (plus d'informations)