Redeemable
A Memoir of Darkness and Hope
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- $22.99
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- $22.99
Publisher Description
Erwin James lost his mother when he was seven. Shipped from home to home after his father turned to alcohol and violence, he committed his first crime of breaking and entering when he was ten. His petty crime turned increasingly violent, culminating in his convictions for murder, for which he was jailed for life at the age of 27.
Entering prison, James struggled to come to terms with the enormity of his crimes and a future without purpose or hope. Then he met Joan, a prison psychologist, who helped him to confront the painful truth of his past, and to understand how it had shaped him from such a young age. Her sessions transformed his life. Encouraged to read and to educate himself, over the next twenty years Erwin James would go on to receive a BA in History, and become a regular columnist for the Guardian.
This is a book that offers no excuses – only the need to understand how we become who we become, and shows that no matter how far a person may fall, redemption is possible with the right kind of help.
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'Honest and Compelling' – Martina Cole
'James shows in a brutally honest memoir how someone can be saved' - Guardian
'Beautifully written, shocking and provocative' – Herald
'A powerful and illuminating description of real life behind bars that stays in your mind long after you put the book down' – Daily Express
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this dark memoir, columnist and author James describes the creation of a thug and murderer. After the death of his mother in a drunken car wreck, James suffered at the hands of a violent, alcoholic father, who dragged him across Great Britain only to abandon him with various relatives. James reacted to this unstable upbringing by engaging in petty theft, which led to stints in various institutions. Alcohol made him a pub bully and brought further encounters with the law. After murdering two people during robberies, he fled the country and joined the French Foreign Legion. When a former partner in crime confessed, James returned to face trial and 20 years in prison. The encouragement of a prison psychiatrist led him to the slow realization that he might still be redeemable, and he found an unlikely calling as a journalist and writer. James's matter-of-fact tone saves his grim biography from melodrama: in his telling, an abused child becomes an abusive man in a way that seems almost inevitable. Most fascinating are his nomadic treks across Britain, sleeping rough for months at a time while still managing to hold down jobs. Oddly, James leaves two pivotal moments underexplored: his decision to return to England, and the moments he committed the murders. These absences leave the book incomplete, but they don't detract from his depiction of the making of a criminal.
