A powerful memoir from an exciting new American political prospect "Spectacular . . . Wes
Moore is a proper leader" George Clooney "I always walk away from a conversation with Wes
Moore with a new perspective...new ideas...with a new way of seeing things...with a new burst
of positive energy." Oprah Winfrey In December 2000 the Baltimore Sun ran a small piece
about Wes Moore a local student who had just received a Rhodes Scholarship. The same paper
also ran a series of articles about four young men who had allegedly killed a police officer in
a spectacularly botched armed robbery. The police were still hunting for two of the suspects
who had gone on the lam a pair of brothers. One was named Wes Moore. Wes just couldn't shake
off the unsettling coincidence or the inkling that the two shared much more than space in the
same newspaper. After following the story of the robbery the manhunt and the trial to its
conclusion he wrote a letter to the other Wes now a convicted murderer serving a life
sentence without the possibility of parole. His letter tentatively asked the questions that had
been haunting him: Who are you? How did this happen? That letter led to a correspondence and
relationship that have lasted for several years. Over dozens of letters and prison visits Wes
discovered that the other Wes had had a life not unlike his own: Both had had difficult
childhoods both were fatherless they'd hung out on similar corners with similar crews and
both had run into trouble with the police. At each stage of their young lives they had come
across similar moments of decision yet their choices would lead them to astonishingly
different destinies. Told in alternating dramatic narratives that take readers from
heart-wrenching losses to moments of surprising redemption The Other Wes Moore tells the story
of a generation of boys trying to find their way in a hostile world.
