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 execute-men 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 story-which has inspired a film a stage play an opera and a
musical album-is more gut-wrenching than ever stirring deep and life-changing reflection in
all who encounter it.
