DEAD MAN WALKING

In 1982, Sister Helen Prejean became the spiritual advisor to Patrick Sonnier, the convicted killer of two teenagers who was sentenced to die in the electric chair of Louisiana's Angola State Prison. In the months before Sonnier's death, the Roman Catholic nun came to know a man who was as terrified as he had once been terrifying. She also came to know the families of the victims and the men whose job it was to executemen who often harbored doubts about the rightness of what they were doing.

Out of that dreadful intimacy comes a profoundly moving spiritual journey through our system of capital punishment. Here Sister Helen confronts both the plight of the condemned and the rage of the bereaved, the fears of a society shattered by violence and the Christian imperative of love.

On its original publication in 1993, Dead Man Walking emerged as an unprecedented look at the human consequences of the death penalty. Now, some two decades later, this storywhich has inspired a film, a stage play, an opera and a musical albumis more gut-wrenching than ever, stirring deep and life-changing reflection in all who encounter it.

Sister Helen Prejean, CSJ, a member of the Congregation of St. Joseph, is known worldwide for starting a dialogue on the death penalty. After witnessing the electrocution of a condemned man in a Louisiana prison in 1984, Prejean wrote the bestselling Dead Man Walking and set out, through storytelling, to bring citizens close to the hard realities of government killings. Her mission has taken her to every U.S. state and to the Vatican, where her personal entreaties to two popes helped to shape Catholic opposition to the death penalty. When not on the road, this lifelong Louisianan, loves to share Cajun jokes, eat Southern cooking, play spirited card games, and write, exploring her fascination with the Divine spark she believes.

Rose Vines (script writer) is an award-winning writer, editor, and technology expert who has worked alongside Sister Helen Prejean at the Ministry Against the Death Penalty for more than two decades. She has also created a companion website for this book. Vines says: My intentions with this graphic retelling have been as follows: I think that it is very important when you make an adaptation that you are not simply illustrating a given text. Why adapt, if not to have a point of view, and have a critical or conscious eye at the gap between the original publication and the new adaptation? My focuses for this adaptation were to expand on the racial disparity between death row victims and also to see how I could use visual communication to bring about the key themes of the book.

Catherine Anyango Grünewald (illustrator) is an internationally exhibited artist and lecturer. She was awarded the Navigator Art on Paper Prize, the largest award for work on paper in the world. She taught at the Royal College of Art in London for ten years and is now a senior lecturer in illustration at Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm.