This is the story of an author and his apprentice. It is the story of literary influence and tragedy. It is also the story of incarceration in America.   Norman Mailer was writing The Executioner’s Song, his novel about condemned killer Gary Gilmore, when he struck up a correspondence with Jack Henry Abbott, Federal Prisoner 87098-132. Over time, Abbott convinced the famous author that he was a talented writer who deserved another chance at freedom. With letters of support from Mailer and other literary elites of the day, Abbott was released on parole in 1981.

About Dr. Jerome Loving:

Dr. Jerome Loving is an American literary critic and academic. He is a professor of American Literature and Culture at Texas A&M University at College Station, and the author of several books about Walt Whitman, Theodore Dreiser, Mark Twain and Emily Dickinson. He served as a Fulbright Professor in Leningrad in 1978 and Paris in 1989-90. His biography of Walt Whitman was a finalist for the Los Angeles Book Prize in 2000. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for his scholarly contributions to American Literature in 2002.

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