Dead Man Walking: The Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty That Sparked a National Debate

· Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Helen Prejean
3.5
2 reviews
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13 hr 50 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook

In 1982, Sister Helen Prejean became the spiritual advisor to Patrick Sonnier, the convicted killer of two teenagers who was sentenced to die in the electric chair of Louisiana’s Angola State Prison. In the months before Sonnier’s death, the Roman Catholic nun came to know a man who was as terrified as he had once been terrifying. She also came to know the families of the victims and the men whose job it was to execute—men who often harbored doubts about the rightness of what they were doing.
        Out of that dreadful intimacy comes a profoundly moving spiritual journey through our system of capital punishment. Here Sister Helen confronts both the plight of the condemned and the rage of the bereaved, the fears of a society shattered by violence and the Christian imperative of love. On its original publication in 1993, Dead Man Walking emerged as an unprecedented look at the human consequences of the death penalty. Now, some two decades later, this story—which has inspired a film, a stage play, an opera and a musical album—is more gut-wrenching than ever, stirring deep and life-changing reflection in all who encounter it.

Read by the author, Helen Prejean
Preface written by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and read by Dominic Hoffman 
Afterwords written and read by Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins

Ratings and reviews

3.5
2 reviews
Terry Salyers
October 24, 2022
a very good debate and book.
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About the author

HELEN PREJEAN, CSJ, is the author of the #1 national bestseller Dead Man Walking. A member of the Congregation of St. Joseph, she has appeared on 60 Minutes, Frontline, The Oprah Winfrey Show, ABC's World News Tonight, The Rachel Maddow Show, Democracy Now!, Crossfire, NBC's special series on the death penalty, and NPR's All Things Considered, and has been featured in The New York Times Magazine, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, and The New York Review of Books.

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