Lazarus and the Hurricane: The Freeing of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter

Rating:
Summary: Inspirational Story
Review: This story is an inspiration. The idea that good can win over evil. That the poor and uneducated will be taken in and educated and the wrongly accused will be freed is a very nice idea. While I'm sure that many of the gritty details of have been over looked or glossed over, I believe that adds to the inspirational value of the book. Afterall, if this story did not have a happy ending Rubin Carter would still be in jail and we would have all forgotten about him long ago.

Rating:
Summary: Inspiring Lives
Review: Two stories in one book, the first part about a young man named Lesra (short for Lazarus) and then the full history of Rubin Carter known as the Hurricane, a black American framed for a crime he never committed and wrongfully imprisoned. A third influence which shadows both stories is a group of people known as the Canadians, their motivations are not revealed to the reader yet without the actions taken by these Canadians the stories with happy endings told in this book would not have been possible.

Lesra was 15 when he was hired to work at a lab in Brooklyn as part of an government funded summer program for inner city youth, it was there that he met a group of Canadians who were working at the lab on a research project. He was invited to visit them later for a weekend in Toronto and they were shocked at the appalling state of his education, though in high school he was unable to read or write and had an extremely limited vocabulary, didn't know how to read a map and had never run on grass. Lesra moved in with them in Canada and they took over his education, Lesra eventually went to university and his whole story of being rescued from a ghetto life and realizing his full potential in a different environment is uplifting.

As Lesra is discovering whole new worlds through books he comes across, "The Sixteenth Round" by Rubin Carter, and Lesra begins writing to Rubin in prison. The group of Canadians become involved with the Hurricane and the rest of the book is devoted to the freeing of Rubin Carter, the incredible amount of work it took and the history of Carter's case in the courts of New Jersey.

Though the book was engrossing there is too much left hanging, mainly what is the motivation of the Canadians and who are they really? Also the title is somewhat misleading as we don't hear much about Lesra except at the beginning. Finally, if it is true as suggested in other reviews here that Rubin was having a love affair that went on for several years with one of the Canadians, then that would most certainly be a glaring omission giving quite a different view of the same story.