{"product_id":"9780374538521","title":"The Uninnocent : Notes on Violence and Mercy","description":"\u003cstrong\u003eThe Uninnocent\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor(s): Katharine Blake\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eThe Uninnocent\u003c\/i\u003e is so elegantly crafted that the pleasure of reading it nearly overrides its devastating subject matter. Blake is an investigator of heartbreak, turning a critical eye on the ways our systems have failed us, and how we fail each other. Through that investigation Blake creates a story of radical empathy, a triumph of care and forgiveness.\"\u003c\/b\u003e  --\u003cb\u003eStephanie Danler, author of \u003ci\u003eStray \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eSweetbitter\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA harrowing intellectual reckoning with crime, mercy, justice and heartbreak through the lens of a murder\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOn a Thursday morning in June 2010, Katharine Blake's sixteen-year-old cousin walked to a nearby bike path with a boxcutter, and killed a young boy he didn’t know. It was a psychological break that tore through his brain, and into the hearts of those who loved both boys—one brutally killed, the other sentenced to die at Angola, one of the country’s most notorious prisons.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eThe Uninnocent\u003c\/i\u003e, Blake, a law student at Stanford at the time of the crime, wrestles with the implications of her cousin’s break, as well as the broken machinations of America’s justice system. As her cousin languished in a cell on death row, where he was assigned for his own protection, Blake struggled to keep her faith in the system she was training to join. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eConsumed with understanding her family’s new reality, Blake became obsessed with heartbreak, seeing it everywhere: in her cousin’s isolation, in the loss at the center of the crime, in the students she taught at various prisons, in the way our justice system breaks rather than mends, in the history of her parents and their violent childhoods. As she delves into a history of heartbreak—through science, medicine, and literature—and chronicles the uneasy yet ultimately tender bond she forms with her cousin, Blake asks probing questions about justice, faith, inheritance, family, and, most of all, mercy. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSensitive, singular, and powerful, effortlessly bridging memoir, essay, and legalese, \u003ci\u003eThe Uninnocent\u003c\/i\u003e is a reckoning with the unimaginable, unforgettable, and seemly irredeemable. With curiosity and vulnerability, Blake unravels a distressed tapestry, finding solace in both its tearing and its mending.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eReview(s):\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eThe Uninnocent\u003c\/i\u003e is so elegantly crafted that the pleasure of reading it nearly overrides its devastating subject matter. Blake is an investigator of heartbreak, turning a critical eye on the ways our systems have failed us, and how we fail each other. Through that investigation Blake creates a story of radical empathy, a triumph of care and forgiveness.\" --\u003cb\u003eStephanie Danler, author of \u003ci\u003eStray \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eSweetbitter\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eThe Uninnocent\u003c\/i\u003e is the riveting and profound story of a woman whose teenage cousin killed a little boy, and yet it is so much more. Katharine Blake has created a brilliant weave of the deeply personal, the intricately legal, an erudite and deeply moving deep dive into families and prisons and mercy, tragedy and love, the law, loss, the sad and beautiful human heart.\" --\u003cb\u003eAnne Lamott, author of \u003ci\u003eAlmost Everything: Notes on Hope\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"'The truth changes,' Katharine Blake’s teenage cousin told a courtroom, before he was sentenced to life without parole. This sprawling essay makes me think of the fourth step in AA, the \u003ci\u003esearching and fearless moral inventory\u003c\/i\u003e. It’s an inquiry—inquiry as action—into justice, forgiveness, the nature of evil, fear and anger, luck. It’s a plea to grant mercy on the people our systems fail and betray—'no room for them down such a narrow way.' \u003ci\u003eThe Uninnocent\u003c\/i\u003e is thoughtful, emotional work, and very moving.\" \u003cb\u003e--Elisa Gabbert, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Unreality of Memory\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \"In \u003ci\u003eThe Uninnocent\u003c\/i\u003e, Katharine Blake takes on an enormous task: approaching a horrific, senseless act of violence with the acuity and rigor of a lawyer, and the compassion and sorrow of someone who loves the perpetrator. From this tension, she writes toward a deeper, more honest understanding of mercy, justice, culpability, and love. It is a searching, open-hearted work, vast in its implications and tender in its execution.\" --\u003cb\u003eJordan Kisner, author of \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThin Places: Essays from In Between\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eISBN:  9780374538521\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e ","brand":"FSG Originals","offers":[{"title":"Paperback \/ softback","offer_id":40822955638990,"sku":"9780374538521","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0600\/7029\/7806\/products\/getimage_b2140fe1-dcd9-4642-9535-a492bd4a514e.jpg?v=1643095908","url":"https:\/\/pickwickbookshop.com\/products\/9780374538521","provider":"Pickwick Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}