Helen Prejean Knihy

"Sister Helen Prejean's stirring spiritual journey is less widely known than her work as the nation's foremost leader in efforts to abolish the death penalty and as an activist nun. In her fiercely honest and moving account of her formative years, Sister Helen tells of an awakening that shattered her insulated life as a nun. In inner-city New Orleans of the 1980s, she learned about her neighbors' daily struggle against racism and recognized her own white privilege. This awakening catapulted her into abolitionist mission and toward a faith that fuels and sustains her work for human rights to this day. Along the way, she navigated close friendships, including one with a priest intent on marrying her, who challenged her vocation in 'the new territory of the heart.' Written in lighthearted, luminous prose, River of Fire captures how one woman, set on a life of prayer and teaching, was summoned from passive obedience and dreamy ideas of a better world to fierce intellectual critique of society. Sister Helen's story will galvanize those who are likewise seeking to lead a passionate and spiritual life that is wide awake to the struggles and creative opportunities of our world." -- From back cover

The book explores the harrowing reality of capital punishment through the cases of Dobie Gillis Williams and Joseph Roger O'Dell, both executed despite questionable evidence and appeals. Sister Helen Prejean, who witnessed their final moments, presents a compelling critique of the moral and legal justifications for the death penalty. By highlighting the possibility of executing innocent individuals, she challenges readers to confront the implications of such irreversible actions, making a powerful case against the practice.

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.