Date: 28 July 2019
Location: Gary & Peggy
We had a nice turn-out of Happy Bookers at Gary and Peggy’s to discuss Neil White’s memoir In the Sanctuary of Outcasts.
White was publisher of an apparently successful gulf coast magazine, which he kept afloat financially with a check kiting scheme. This was eventually discovered, and he was prosecuted and sentenced to a year in the federal prison at Carville, Louisiana. The Carville facility was also the home of the last leper colony in the mainland US, where the leprosy patients were housed along with the convicted prisoners.
White describes his transition from a successful, well-respected business man to just another inmate among a diverse collection of crooked accountants, scam artists, and convicted drug dealers. His descriptions of the prisoners and their activities and antics make for some of the most interesting reading in the book. He also describes his interactions with some of the patients, many of whom were forcefully confined to the facility as children or young adults. The patients are no longer legally required to remain there, but many have no place else to go and, because of their disfigurements, are often treated as outcasts by the population at large. In the book, White relates many of their heart-rending stories, and he also describes the effects of his imprisonment on his wife, who divorced him, and on his two children.
Most of us enjoyed the book and considered it definitely worth reading. A couple of Bookers suggested that White came across as self-centered and they would have liked to know more about some of the other individuals in the facility. On the other hand, the book is White’s memoir–about his time in federal prison and the activities that lead to his incarceration–so I guess he has the right to focus primarily on himself.
White visited Huntsville a number of years ago, shortly after the book’s publication, to discuss the book with the Huntsville Literary
Association. Several of us read the book at that time and attended his talk. We all enjoyed his talk and found him to be very personable; but of course this should not be surprising since it was his charm that enabled him to con so many people.
After our discussions, we had another of Peggy’s wonderful meals. What a treat!
— Bob