Customer Reviews

Doing Time: Finding Hope at San Quentin

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Upon reading the final words of Dennis Burke's book, I found myself strangely envious of the San Quentin prisoners so vividly described. I would not trade my freedom. However, how rewarding it would have been, for ten years of my life, to have had a man so learned in the best of both the spiritual and the secular seek me out with only my eternal and temporal welfare in mind. This was the lot of the San Quentin inmates during Dennis Burke's prison ministry. Although I am Catholic, I have never had a priest (like Dennis Burke had been) listen so uncritically to my human failings so as to draw out of me my own recognition of them--to be humbled without being humiliated. But now the hard side: I was myself both a state and federal probation officer for well over thirty years. Sadly, I have heard many a defendant convincingly claim innocence and victimization by "the system." Fortunately, I was entrusted to investigate their social and criminal histories to the depth that my own integrity and professional standards lead me to do so. Sadly, I often (but not always) found that I myself was being "conned" by their accounts. But I was not a chaplain--and Dennis Burke was obviously an outstanding one. I wonder which of us was right: I, who exposed their false protestations and revealed them to the sentencing judge; or Dennis Burke who brought them to God with the promise of forgiveness and understanding? This is the question the book presented to me--and perhaps to the reader.

Dennis Burke has captured the "soul" of San Quentin in this moving and
provocative exploration of the minds and lives of the men who struggle daily
to find meaning behind the walls of our massive, oppressive, and unforgiving
prisons.

He tells the story of San Quentin, and more than that, the story life in
prisons everywhere, as only an insider can do. It takes at least a decade in
the bowels of the monster to understand it and to fathom the souls of those
who have been--or may be--consumed by it. And Burke has "done his time" there.

In the end, this is an inspired and inspiring account of the human condition--replete with
telling insights into the rainbow of hate, violence, intolerance, racism,
cruelty, despair, intimacy, strength, weakness, humor, love, and hope that
define us all.

Collections strong in ministry resources will welcome DOING TIME: FINDING HOPE AT SAN QUENTIN. It offers up a personal story of the author's ten years of prison ministry, visiting men in the cellblocks at San Quentin State Prison, and it provides case histories of issues and spiritual concerns behind prison walls. Spiritual collections strong in ministry services will find it revealing and poignant.

This was a great read. The author had a real conversion and he was a person you got to like a lot with a family you loved. This is an honest book, you feel he was so taken by his finding his love for and need for God he had to tell it. I read this book in two days because I couldn't put it down; the fellow can write and he has a message you want to hear.

I don't mention his name here because I don't remember how to spell it and I lent the book to my daughter-in-law with a "you have to read this".