"In the Sanctuary of Outcasts" is Neil White's bittersweet memoir about serving time in Carville Prison in the late 1990s. Carville prison was no ordinary, white-collar penitentiary; it was also the last leprosarium ("leper colony") in the United States. Sentenced for kiting checks, White has to overcome the humiliation of his conviction, guilt for betraying friends and family, his crumbling marriage, and his initial revulsion of the patients suffering from leprosy.
Quite surprisingly, White finds a certain solace in this place. Although he initially believes that he is a cut above the other inmates, he realizes that he has far more in common with his fellow convicts than he previously believed. He also develops close relationships with the leprosy patients who help him through the hard times and whose inner strength give White the courage to look inside himself and the courage to ask for forgiveness.
White is able to convey his story effectively. He evocatively describes his life at Carville and the reader has no difficulty imagining what it was like to be there. He describes his fellow inmates and the patients with leprosy with compassion, humor, and dignity. He convincingly tells us how his time in prison transformed him, how he becomes a better person because of this experience.
White is a storyteller. He doesn't dwell on the philosophical. His revelations come through stories and we are able to see White through his own eyes and through his interactions with his fellow inmates, the patients, and his family. This makes the book as easy to read as it is meaningful.
One caveat, of course, is that the book is written solely from White's point of view. Although he seems truly repentant throughout the narrative and in his acknowledgments, his crime involved prolonged amounts of deception. I would certainly hope that the book is less about spin and more about catharsis for White, but this would be impossible to discern. Either way, the book is both moving and meaningful for the reader.
White is not beyond brazenly throwing in a literary reference. It is hard to overlook the fact that the title that shares both syllables and a certain assonance with "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole. White mentions this book by name, as a book that was confiscated from him on entry to Carville. I am no literary critic, but Toole's book deals with some hard-hitting themes such powerlessness in the face of fate, legalized slavery, the crumbling of the Protestant work ethic, and the elusiveness of the American Dream. All of these are relevant to White's situation, of course, but the reference does little more than add a bit of ironic poetry to the title.
All in all, this is a well written, meaningful, and rewarding book to read. I highly recommend it.
