A Prisoner’s Pardon

C'Mone Skye grew up on the mean streets of Chicago's West Side, where she routinely witnessed sad, bloody and terrifying events. Here, she spent way too much time bearing the burden of her twin brother's crimes. "Where's Tyrone?" friends and family would ask her. All too often, her answer was, "He's in jail." By his teens, he had become trapped in the cycle known as recidivism. Decades later, C'Mone was living in Wisconsin, 90 miles north of her hometown. It was during one of Tyrone's rare periods of freedom that she got a call from a Chicago police officer. He was hunting for her twin, and this time the charge was serious enough to put him away for many years.

It was then that C'Mone decided to find the truth: Why was Tyrone repeatedly in jail? How could she help him make this incarceration his last? And what exactly did his problems have to do with her own?

In this memoir, C'Mone looks at her family through the lenses of home, government, and church, three institutions that had always played significant roles in their lives. She discovers that she and Tyrone were suffering from "twin sins." And she finds the solution in the biblical story of Joseph, whose experience as a prisoner in Egypt unveiled legal and spiritual lessons pertinent to recidivism--not only for the Skye family but for anyone trapped in its clutches.

That solution? A prisoner's pardon.