The Prison Guard's Daughter

Book excerpt: In this moving memoir, a woman recounts her search for truth and justice regarding her father’s murder during America’s deadliest prison riot. Deanne Quinn Miller was five years old when her father—William “Billy” Quinn—was murdered in the first minutes of the Attica Prison Riot, the only corrections officer to die at the hands of inmates. But how did he die? Who were the killers? Those questions haunted Dee and wreaked havoc on her psyche for thirty years. Finally, when she joined the Forgotten Victims of Attica, she began to find answers. This began the process of bringing closure not only for herself but for the other victims’ families, the former prisoners she met, and all of those who perished on September 13, 1971—the day of the “retaking,” when New York State troopers and corrections officers at the Attica Correctional facility slaughtered twenty-nine rioting prisoners and ten hostages in a hail of gunfire. In The Prison Guard’s Daughter, Dee brings readers in on her lifelong mission for the truth and justice for the Attica survivors and the families of the men who lost their lives. But the real win was the journey that crossed racial and criminal-justice divides: befriending infamous Attica prisoner Frank “Big Black” Smith, meeting Richard Clark and other inmates who tried to carry her father to safety after his beating, and learning what life was like for all the people—prisoners and prison employees alike—inside Attica. As Miller lays bare the truth about her father’s death, the world inside Attica, and the state’s reckless raid and coverup, she conveys a narrative of compassionate humanity and a call for prison reform. Praise for The Prison Guard’s Daughter “A remarkable tale of healing and reconciliation, born from the tragedy of the nation’s deadliest prison uprising . . . . The Prison Guard’s Daughter reminds us that we can reach across divides—racial, social, economic—and learn lessons about others that inevitably teach us about ourselves. In a world in which the chasms among people seem to swell wider every day, this book tells us that our true angels can prevail, as long as we are ready to engage them.” —Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking: The Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty That Sparked a National Debate “In the wake of the unimaginable trauma caused by the State of New York, there were the courageous few who had to endure even more pain to make sure that there was some reckoning with this horrific event, and some measure of justice for its victims. This is the extraordinarily beautiful story of one of the most courageous of those few, Dee Quinn Miller, who, quite literally, changed history.” —Heather Ann Thompson, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy “A personal, affecting, and eye-opening account of a pivotal tragedy on the seemingly endless road to prison reform.” —Booklist