An 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.
In the hands of Lawrence Wright, this tale is oddly compelling, even, dare I say, uplifting ... What elevates Redemption, a quiet tale of the bad and good things you didn’t think people were capable of, is the nuance behind the notoriety of those waiting to be executed by the State of Texas ... While the tale of unlikely new friends is fascinating, this is also a personal book, very much about Wright’s evolving views on faith ... The book runs out of momentum in two diversions that read like filler.
t may be Wright’s most personal work of journalism, a truly moving and thoughtful book that will challenge readers’ assumptions about guilt, justice, and transformation ... Ideal for dipping in and out of. Profiles of individual prisoners and nuns are richly observed and beautifully rendered.
...in expanding that lengthy article into a book, he sometimes loses the thread, indulging in digressions that detract from his study of transformation and redemption ... For all its narrative quirks, Redemption does function as what Wright calls 'an appeal to conscience.' In its pages, he asks a series of penetrating questions: Does faith retain value even if the stories underlying it are human inventions? How can Christians, who both grieve and celebrate the sacrifice of Jesus, support a flawed justice system that inevitably executes innocents?
