Invisible Prisons
Jack Whalen's Tireless Fight for Justice
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
WINNER OF THE 2024 BMO WINTERSET AWARD • FINALIST FOR THE 2024 HILARY WESTON WRITERS' TRUST PRIZE • One of The Globe and Mail's Best Books of 2024 • One of CBC’s Best Canadian Non-Fiction Books of 2024
Riveting nonfiction from multi-award-winning author Lisa Moore, based on the shocking true story of a teenaged boy who endured abuse and solitary confinement at a reform school in Newfoundland, but survived through grit and redemptive love.
Invisible Prisons is an extraordinary, empathetic collaboration between the magnificent writer Lisa Moore, best-known for her award-winning fiction, and a man named Jack Whalen, who as a child was held for four years at a reform school for boys in St John’s, where he suffered jaw-dropping abuses and deprivations. Despite the odds stacked against him, he found love on the other side, and managed to turn his life around as a husband and father. His daughter, Brittany, vowed at a young age to become a lawyer so that she could seek justice for him. Today, that is exactly what she is doing—and Jack's case is part of a lawsuit currently before the courts.
The story has parallels with Unholy Orders by Michael Harris about the Mount Cashel orphanage, and with the many horrific stories about residential schools—all of which expose a paternalistic state causing harm and a larger society looking away. Yet two powerful qualities set this story apart. As much as it is about an abusive system preying on children, it is also a tender tale of love between Jack and his wife Glennis, who saw the good man inside a damaged person and believed in him. And it is written in a novelistic way by the great Lisa Moore, who makes vividly real every moment and character in these pages.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
In this extraordinary book, Lisa Moore documented the state-sponsored cruelty experienced by Jack Whalen. Starting when he was 13, Whalen spent four years in a Newfoundland reform school, running away repeatedly throughout his stay. The consequences—solitary confinement when he was bad, cigarettes if he was good—far outstripped the transgressions. Known for her fiction, Moore adds literary touches to the retelling, but there’s no dressing up the brutality. There is, though, light in the form of Jack’s wife, Glennis, who offered hope, and their attorney daughter, Brittany, who leads a legal fight seeking justice for the abused. The hellish descriptions of Whitbourne Boys’ Home call to mind the atrocities from Canada’s residential schools, with a different set of adults to blame. Together, Moore and Whalen drag out the ugliness for all to see and make it clear that even if some things can never be put right, they can still be learned from.
