…Interested in reading one of our examples? Take a look at some of the Prison Reads we have written. We would be glad to send you any that are available in print.
Before Shawshank: High School Basketball at the Ohio State Reformatory tells the story of a young teacher who enters the Ohio State Reformatory believing rehabilitation should work one way. Then he begins coaching an inmate high school basketball team that plays its games outside the prison walls. One experience changes what he believes. The RCR seed: Sometimes what we believe intellectually changes only after reality gives us a different experience.
Ruth and the Navy Man tells the story of a preacher’s daughter who wants to leave her religious upbringing behind. Then she meets Bud, a young Navy man preparing to leave for war. Their conversations cause Ruth to examine something she had seldom questioned—not what she believed, but why she believed it. Bud eventually leaves Ruth a battered Bible filled with another man’s handwritten thoughts. Ruth begins reading and begins seeing her past and herself differently. The RCR seed: Sometimes examining an old belief is the beginning of discovering whether it is really ours.
Bear’s Bible explores another person’s River and the experiences and beliefs that helped shape who he became.
The RCR seed: What happened to us may help explain who we became. It does not have to decide who we remain.
The Olive Hill Trilogy follows people and families through war, loss, love, betrayal, survival, relationships, and community. People are shaped by what happens to them—and sometimes by what never happened for them. The characters simply live their lives. Make choices. Develop beliefs. Hurt people. Help people. Carry old experiences downstream. The RCR seed: Long before a choice is made, a story is already being written.
Carter, Armstrong, Mateo, Jax are four short Kindle stories about four people who followed different paths to prison. Family. Relationships. Beliefs. Trauma. Choices. Different experiences shaped different lives. Each story looks upstream at some of the realities that existed long before the prison gate. The RCR seed: Every person arrives at prison with a story already written. Understanding that story may help them begin to understand how they got there.