Willow in a Storm

Book excerpt: In this moving memoir, James Peter Taylor invites us to share in the painful and realistic struggles of prison survival, where he lived from age 25 in the 1950s until his release in the mid-1990s. Now an old man, he reflects on how he made it for so many years when many other lifers die in prison. He survives, he believes, not by being a stable, sturdy oak, but by bending like a willow to new and horrible situations. Taylor colors his surprising story with vivid anecdotes, never shying away from the sexual and physical violence endemic to prison. As he matures, his faith in God helps him assist others stuck in the system.