Leaving Disneyland: A Novel [Hardcover]

Alexander Parsons (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 5, 2001

Doc Kane is sixteen years into a twenty-year murder sentence. Days away from a parole hearing, he means to get out and start a new life as a Square John-a law-abiding citizen. Within the predatory confines of Tyburn Penitentiary, however, he has debts to pay. To start, Doc has his duties as a "heavy" in the D.C. Blacks, a gang that has protected him. Then there is his new cellmate, a young dealer doing life without parole whose ignorance of the prison's code threatens them both. Finally, there are the guards: Sergeant Grippe, who is bent on "rehabilitating" Doc, and Raven, whose intentions are veiled but no less menacing.

Beyond these dangers, Doc faces a deeper dilemma, one embodied by Dead Earl, a thumbless junkie and reminder of a past Doc would deny. The experience of sixteen years surviving in a violent prison has shaped Doc as profoundly as a river does its course. And if character is fate, Doc's chances for a life on the straight-and-narrow are slim unless he can reshape himself. This, he discovers, is the real struggle. If he's to have any hope for his future, he must first confront his past.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In Hamlet, Denmark's a prison; in this novel of ghosts, jail cells and the undying past, there are prisons everywhere, which accounts for the aura of bleak misery that hovers over Doc Kane, who killed his son-in-law for beating up his daughter and is now serving time in Tyburn Penitentiary in Nevada. Kane, a member of the D.C. Blacks, is up for parole, but there's a hitch his new cellmate, Byron Cripps, killed a member of Doc's gang, and the other D.C. Blacks in Tyburn have Cripps marked for a quick and violent death. Harassed by a guard and haunted by Dead Earl, the ghost of a man who used to be Doc's runner back when he was a drug dealer, Doc can't escape his past in prison or back in D.C., when he finally makes it home. There's a noirish feel to this novel (which won the 2000-2001 AWP/ Thomas Dunne Books Award), and the question of whether Doc will be able to build a new life for himself or fall into the pit of his old one seems rhetorical at best. Yet the novel is not unremittingly gloomy. From the cadences of prison speech to the rituals of respect and disrespect that mean so much to men with little to live for, all is vividly authentic. With no happy Hallmark card climax, this downbeat, low-key story has an ending to match its uncompromising mood. By keeping the action real and not going over the top, Parsons has produced the novelistic equivalent of a great B-movie, its modest goals expertly realized. Agent, Kim Witherspoon.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Doc Kane has served 16 years of a 20-year murder sentence in a federal penitentiary in the Nevada desert. In a rage, he killed his son-in-law for beating his daughter. As the possibility for parole approaches, Doc walks a tightrope. His new cell mate is an arrogant young thug, a drug dealer who has murdered the brother of a fellow inmate and member of Doc's gang in his hometown of Washington, D.C. Doc is torn between old loyalty to his gang and the need to walk the straight and narrow to get out of prison. After meeting tests of loyalty and violence at the hands of guards and fellow inmates, Doc finally manages to make parole. But he can't free himself from a past that literally haunts him. Back in D.C., an aging ex-con, Doc has to stay away from friends and family, guaranteeing that he will struggle mightily, in isolation, with the square life. Parsons, winner of the AWP/Thomas Dunne Books Award, has written an intense novel about one man's efforts to survive and to reconcile himself with his violent past. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 264 pages
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books; 1st edition (October 5, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312278551
• ISBN-13: 978-0312278557
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,620,039 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Accomplished First Novel, March 11, 2002

By 

taking a rest - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Leaving Disneyland: A Novel (Hardcover)

"Leaving Disneyland", is a debut novel by Alexander Parsons. The book is extremely good first work, especially when the author has tackled an environment he has only read about. He gives appropriate credit to his source for the prison he creates, but if you have read works by true inmates you will be impressed with the authenticity he brings to his novel. It is easy to forget this is a work of fiction.

Doc Kane is the man we follow throughout the book. He is on the verge of a parole hearing that will likely lead to his release after 16 years. A new cellmate and some favors are all that stand in his way. Readers that would suggest this tale is cliché, and the questions it poses rhetorical, have not given the book a fair reading. The book is about much more than a man who faces the trials of possibly leaving prison, only to be tagged with an electronic band and monitored as closely outside of the penitentiary as he was within its walls.

The book for me was about the pervasiveness of the jail Doc Kane lives in. Whether inside a 5x9 cell, or walking the streets electronically tagged, he never regains his freedom. The Washington streets he returns to are populated by the same gangs, and the same equally fragile codes of honor that are as lethal while incarcerated or when he "freely" walks the streets. The daily prison routine is replaced by a parole officer, who has every bit as much control and power, to send him back to prison, as the guards in the penitentiary had to punish him.

Work is a condition of parole, but how high are the chances of employment when a job application is filled out? And even if a job is there how much does it differ in mindless routine from the one he left in prison? The friends of 16 years even if they too are paroled are off limits to him as a meeting would send him back inside.

And then there are his own perceived demons and they are every bit as real and problematic as any he has faced before. Virtually every diversion, which would be legal for him to enjoy, because of his parole are denied to him. The book is a great commentary on just what being let out of prison means for the vast majority of those who spend time there. This is not about a so-called, "Club Fed", where white-collar criminals worst issues are boredom and their loss of face in their former world. The latter is often not even at issue; just think about, "The Junk Bond King".

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars So weird and so real..., November 13, 2004

By 

T Rider "Jason" (Red Sox Country) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Leaving Disneyland: A Novel (Hardcover)

Mr. Parsons knows this world. I thank him for allowing me access to it. He's compassionate and honest in his prose.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A compelling novel on many different levels, January 14, 2002

By 

Bruce G. Peabody (New Jersey) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Leaving Disneyland: A Novel (Hardcover)

Leaving Disneyland is a compelling novel on so many different levels. On a purely aesthetic dimension, it is a pleasure and a welcome challenge read - a pleasure because Parsons' writing is beautiful and confident, a challenge because his artful language provides careful clues to understanding his characters and the layered significance of his narrative. Parsons' characters are well-rendered and subtly portrayed - many of his secondary figures are so well-depicted that they seem to deserve a short novel of their own. His dialogue is paced, energetic, and consuming; you will become so engaged, so intimately connected with the conversations in this book, that you will often feel tense, even personally endangered. Finally, as a depiction of the experiences of life in prison and the difficulties of rehabilitation, Leaving Disneyland is masterfully researched and powerfully presented. Parsons' readers will leave Disneyland wiser, a little shaken, and hungry for more from this terrific new talent.