Prisoners of the Williwaw [Paperback]

Ed Griffin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 21, 2000

What would happen if three hundred hardened convicts petitioned the United States Government for an abandoned island where, accompanied by their families, they would be set free to earn their own way?

Overwhelmed by prison budgets and prison riots, the government agrees and sets the prisoners free on windswept, treeless Adak in the Aleutians, the site of a former "hard duty" Navy station.

Prisoners Of The Williwaw is the story of the power struggle between the idealistic leader of this expedition, convict Frank Villa, and a smooth prison boss, James T. Gilmore. Frank Villa opens a school, arranges jobs for people in a small assembly factory and calls for free elections. "Boss" Gilmore opens a house of prostitution, sells booze, drugs, and guns, and schemes to take over the island one way or another.

Frank's struggle is internal as well as external. He strives to overcome the effects of prison on his psyche. A convict must be passive; a man in charge of a community must take command. A convict must build a wall inside himself against any relationship with a woman; a free man has to leave himself open to love.

The strife between Villa and Gilmore accelerates when their wives arrive and unexpected complications develop.

These conflicts play out against a backdrop of constant rain, vicious windstorms (williwaws), escape attempts, and a coup by a new group of prisoners from the federal penitentiary in Florence, Colorado, the worst of the worst.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Ed Griffin teaches creative writing at Matsqui Prison, a medium security prison in Western Canada. He taught the same subject at Waupun prison, a maximum security prison in Wisconsin. He began his professional life in 1962 as a Roman Catholic priest in Cleveland, Ohio. There he became active in the civil rights movement and marched in Selma with Doctor Martin Luther King. Removed from a suburban parish for his activities, he served for three years in Cleveland's central city. His years in the Roman Catholic Priesthood are the subject of his next novel. After leaving the priesthood in 1968 he earned a masters degree at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and was elected to Milwaukee's city council in 1972. Griffin and his wife, Kathy, opened a commercial greenhouse in suburban Milwaukee in 1976. They lived where they worked and shared the joys of raising children and growing flowers. In 1988 the family, Ed and Kathy, Kevin and Kerry, moved to British Columbia, Canada, where Griffin helped establish a dynamic writing community in the city of Surrey. He is the founder of Western Canada's largest writer's conference, the Surrey Writers' Conference. He has published poetry, plays, short stories and a newspaper column. His writing has won several awards and the American Humanist Society has honored him as the teacher of a prize-winning inmate writer. Griffin believes that all the arts, including writing, should be encouraged in prison. As Aristotle said, 'art releases unconscious tensions and purges the soul.' Visit the author's web site.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

One of the most dangerous local phenomena occurring in the Aleutians is the "Williwaw." This is a type of wind which results from the damming up of air on windward slopes followed by an overflow of air down the leeward slopes. These gusts often are in excess of 60 knots.

U.S. Navy publication, Welcome to Adak

Chapter 1

Melt the bars, Frank. Walk through them. Frank Villa heard his cell mate hammering at him in his mind. Melt the bars. You're a person, not an inmate.

The guard blocked his passage down the narrow tier. "Inmate Villa, I repeat, 'Throw away the cigarette.'"

Frank showed his two hands. "I'm not smoking."

"On your ear, Inmate Villa, there's a cigarette."

Frank reached up. Sure enough. He had rolled a smoke for his walk back to the cell block, but the teacher he worked for had called him back into the classroom. Frank took the cigarette off his ear and palmed it. "It's not lit, see?"

"Throw it away." The cell block guard pointed to the trash can at the end of the tier.

Frank hesitated. Throw it away? The equivalent of fifty cents in prison money, an hour's work. Throw it away?

"Inmate Villa, I said now."

Again his cell mate's words: Melt the bars, Frank. Lose the battle, win the war.

He threw the smoke into the can and continued down the tier toward his cell. He bounced his left hand along the bars as he went, to let his anger dissipate into the steel. Prison sucked the balls out of a man and left him as a passive shell.

Through fourteen years in prison he had earned a masters in sociology, become a tutor and stayed out of trouble. And still he was Inmate Villa, nothing more.

Frank grabbed the last bar of his open cell door and pivoted himself in. He smelled the tea Rudy had brewed for him, strong morning tea. It was 11:15. Rudy sat lotus style on the top bunk, reading. The winter sun shone through the barred window on the outer wall and cast a shadow across his face and down over the book he was reading.

Frank stared at the image of the bar. It was Rudy who had taught him all about bars, fourteen years ago. "Melt the bars," Rudy first told him a long time ago when he came to prison. "Walk into the world of knowledge, Frank, and the bars will disappear. Freedom is inside you."

Product Details

• Paperback: 300 pages
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing (July 21, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1552123979
• ISBN-13: 978-1552123973
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,393,534 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars well written...., October 12, 2000

By 

Herman Stoelers - See all my reviews

This review is from: Prisoners of the Williwaw (Paperback)

Ed Griffin weaves an entertaining tale - one akin to Grisham and Clancy. A fast-paced, easy read -- VERY enjoyable!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Forbidden love, adventure and hope, October 17, 2000

By 

Douglas E. Skiba "Doug" (Wyoming, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Prisoners of the Williwaw (Paperback)

Prisoners of the Williwaw was more than I had hoped for. Besides being a very quick read, it gave a credible insight into prison life and language. After I read about Mr. Griffin's "prison background" as a teacher I knew that the thoughts and spoken words of the characters were as real as they could get. The amazingly short chapters and nonstop twists and turns kept me flipping pages long after bedtime. If you're looking for a little adventure, forbidden love or a story of hope, Prisoners of the Williwaw has it all!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent -- a Page Turner, October 9, 2000

By 

Michael Gordon (Utah) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Prisoners of the Williwaw (Paperback)

"Feel the power!" I liked it. I spent two daysthinking about it after reading it; not only did it bring backmemories of my time on Adak, I also thought about the development ofleadership and freedom, provoked by a hope of a prison without walls,countered by haughty prison bosses, and ultimately influenced by thepower of the wind. Rather similar to my military experience, completewith a few splashes of prison language which is remarkably similar tosailor talk. Ed Griffin spins a fascinating -- and credible -- taleof prisoners who suddenly find themselves free to do anything theywant confined only by weather, the sea, the U.S. Coast Guard andeventually by their own choices. Williwaw -- just a gimmick? Hardly:The wind -- the williwaw -- has blown me right off my feet. It hasblown roofs off houses, rolled steel dumpsters, and pushed my caracross a street into a ditch. I've seen the barometer swing 3 inchesof mercury in only 6 hours (on that same day it blew out half-inchthick windows and knocked over the station's main transmitting antennaand I think it was the same day that Birchwood's roof blew off;October 1978). The sea is so cold that to fall in it will kill you in9 minutes (estimated, your mileage may vary). If anything, Ed Griffinmakes it seem too easy...