James S. Hirsch - Hurricane: The Miraculous Journey of Rubin Carter

Hurricane recounts the harrowing, inspiring odyssey of Rubin Hurricane Carter, a black boxer wrongly convicted of three murders, from fierce despair to freedom and enlightenment. On June 17, 1966, two black men strode into the Lafayette Grill, a white redoubt in racially mixed Paterson, New Jersey, and shot three people to death. Rubin Carter and his young acquaintance John Artis were not those men, but they were convicted of the murders in a highly publicized and racially charged trial. Over the next decade, Carter amassed convincing evidence of his innocence and the vocal support of numerous celebrities (Bob Dylans song Hurricane was but one example). He was freed pending a new trial, only to lose his appeal - to the astonishment of many - and land back in prison. He avoided almost all human contact, until he received a letter from Lesra Martin, a teenager raised in a Brooklyn ghetto. Against his bitter instincts, Carter agreed to meet with Martin, thus taking the first step on a long, tortuous path back into the world. Martin introduced Carter to an enigmatic group of Canadians, including a strong-willed woman with whom he later began an intense unlikely romance. In the process, the Canadians helped wage an international battle to free him.--Jacket.