Finished for Friday: Outcasts

This book was recommended by the irrepressible Mark Lipinski on his Creative Mojo podcast.  If you haven't caught his podcast yet, I highly recommend it!  Definitely inspiring and fun for all types of creative people.

This memoir by Neil White tells of his incarceration at a minimum security prison in Louisiana.  He's honest, if perhaps a bit incomplete, about the financial wrongdoing that got him there.  He's also honest about his love of the finer things in life, his clothing and appearance, and even the cologne he always wore before his sentence.

In an ironic twist of fate, the prison he is sent to is also the last remaining leper colony in the continental United States. 

As much as he doesn't want to be near the patients or touch them, he comes to realize that they don't want him near them either.  Yet despite their mutual distrust and diverse backgrounds he finds common ground and unexpected friendships. 

This is not a movie of the week - his redemption is incomplete and somewhat imperfect, yet the journey he takes in discovering himself and his own faults makes for great reading. I was fascinated by the inside look at both prison life and the histories of the patients with Hanson's Disease.

Definitely a different kind of book than I usually read, but I'm going to be recommending this one to lots of people. 

What have you been up to this week?  Thanks for joining in!  By the time you read this I'm off to Disneyland to celebrate with my twins for their 13th birthday.  13!  How did that happen?