Redemption
Faith, Justice, and Sisterhood on Death Row
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- 11,99 €
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- 11,99 €
Publisher Description
A powerful and startling account of the unsparing connection between a convent of cloistered nuns and the condemned women on Texas’s death row, exploring questions around crime and punishment, faith, and retribution in America as only Lawrence Wright can.
“Redemption gripped me like the best crime novel and left me fundamentally changed. The relationship between two groups of isolated women teaches us the most elusive of values: true empathy." —Belle Burden, author of Strangers
In the fall of 2014, Deacon Ronnie Lastovica visited a women’s prison in Gatesville, Texas and gave communion to the women on death row. Moved by the meeting, the Deacon vowed to return weekly, but he knew he couldn’t help these women alone. He called upon the Sisters of Mary Morning Star, a group of contemplative nuns in Waco, Texas, to visit the seven condemned women with him. What follows is an incredible story of a spiritual alliance between two groups of women who, though they couldn't seem more different, are living uniquely similar lives.
Lawrence Wright takes us into the death row unit, laying bare their stories. Some of the women in prison wrestle with guilt over the suffering they’ve caused; others fiercely maintain their innocence. As Wright learns more about their cases, unethical police practices and improper forensic methods cast doubt on whether some of these women actually committed the crimes for which they’ll pay the ultimate price.
Clear-eyed and rousing, layered and morally complex, Redemption explores ideas of retribution, spirituality, and the question of absolution.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
New Yorker journalist Lawrence Wright explores the intersection of religious faith and capital punishment in this thought-provoking work. The Sisters of Mary Morning Star are an order of contemplative nuns whose members spend much of their time in silence and prayer. And yet, when a clergyman asks them to visit women on death row at a Texas prison, they agree, even though their time with the inmates will be devoted almost entirely to one activity: talking. Wright expertly guides us into the insular worlds of these women as they slowly build trust, finding common ground in lives defined by confinement and isolation. This is right in Wright’s wheelhouse, as his other acclaimed non-fiction books have taken us inside similarly closed-off worlds, including the Church of Scientology and al-Qaeda. But what’s eye-opening here are the difficult questions about forgiveness and spiritual redemption that emerge from this deeply human story.
