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Daddy is going to camp. That's what I told my children. But it wasn't camp. . . .
Neil White wanted only the best for those he loved and was willing to go to any lengths to provide it—which is how he ended up in a federal prison in rural Louisiana, serving eighteen months for bank fraud. But it was no ordinary prison. The beautiful, isolated colony in Carville, Louisiana, was also home to the last people in the continental United States disfigured by leprosy—a small circle of outcasts who had forged a tenacious, clandestine community, a fortress to repel the cruelty of the outside world. In this place rich with history, amid an unlikely mix of leprosy patients, nuns, and criminals, White's strange and compelling new life journey began.
An extraordinary memoir at once funny, poignant, and uplifting, In the Sanctuary of Outcasts reminds us all what matters most.
Following conviction for bank fraud, White spent a year in a minimum-security prison in Carville, La., housed in the last leper colony in mainland America. His fascinating memoir reflects on the sizable group of lepers living alongside the prisoners, social outcasts among the motley inmate crew of drug dealers, mob types and killers. Narrating in colorful, entertaining snapshots, White introduces the reader to an excellent supporting cast in his imprisonment: Father Reynolds, the peerless spiritual monk; Mr. Flowers, the no-nonsense case manager; Anne, the sorrowful mother with leprosy whose baby was taken from her arms; and Ella the Earth Mother, with wisdom to spare. Brisk, ironic and perceptive, White's introspective memoir puts a magnifying glass to a flawed life, revealing that all of life is to be savored and respected. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Neil White is the former publisher of New Orleans Magazine, Coast magazine, and Coast Business Journal. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi, where he owns a small publishing company. This is his first book.
In the Sanctuary of Outcasts
A Memoir
Chapter One
Daddy is going to camp. That's what I told my children. A child psychologist suggested it. "Words like prison and jail conjure up dangerous images for children," she explained.
But it wasn't camp. It was prison.
"I'm Neil White," I said, introducing myself to the man in the guardhouse. I smiled. "Here to self-surrender."
The guard looked at his clipboard, then at my leather bag, then at his watch. "You're forty-five minutes early."
"Yes, sir," I said, standing tall, certain my punctuality would demonstrate that I was not your typical prisoner. The guard pointed to a concrete bench next to the guardhouse and told me to wait.
The grounds were orderly and beautiful. Ancient live oaks, their gnarled arms twisting without direction, lined the grove between the prison and the river levee. The compound...called "Carville" by the U.S. marshal who had assigned me to this prison...was a series of classic revival-style two-story buildings. The walls were thick concrete painted off-white, and each building was connected by a two-story enclosed walkway. Large arched windows covered by thick screens lined the walls. There were no bars on the windows. Nothing but screen between prison and freedom.
Through the windows I saw a man limping in the hallway. He stopped at the last arched window, the one closest to the guardhouse, and looked out. He was a small black man wearing a gentleman's hat. Through the screen his face looked almost flat. He stood at the window and nodded as if he had been expecting me, so I waved. He waved back, but something was wrong with his hand. He had nofingers.
I stood and stepped over to the guardhouse. "Is that an inmate?" I asked the guard with the clipboard, motioning toward the man behind the screen.
"Patient," the guard said.
"A sick inmate?"
"You'll find out," he said, and went back to his clipboard.
I looked back for the man with no fingers, but he was no longer at the window. I wondered if he had lost his fingers making license plates or in some kind of prison-industry accident. Or God forbid, in a knife fight. I returned to my bench wondering why he was roaming about instead of locked in a cell.
The prison sat at the end of a narrow peninsula formed by a bend in the Mississippi River, twenty miles south of Baton Rouge. The strip of land was isolated, surrounded by water on three sides. My wife, Linda, and I had driven ninety quiet, tense minutes north from New Orleans. We left the radio off, but neither of us knew what to say. As we passed through the tiny town of Carville, Louisiana, a road sign warned: PAVEMENT ENDS TWO MILES. Just outside the prison gate, I'd stood at the passenger window. Linda looked straight ahead gripping the steering wheel with both hands. I'd leaned in through the window to kiss her good-bye. A cold, short kiss. Then I watched her drive away down River Road until she disappeared around the bend.
As I sat on the bench, waiting for the guard, I resolved again to keep the promises I made to Linda and our children...that I would emerge the same husband, the same father; that I would turn this year into something positive; that I would come out with my talents intact; that I would have a plan for our future.
A guard in a gray uniform drove toward me in a golf cart. He stopped in front of the bench and stepped out of the cart. A tall, muscular black man, he must have stood six feet, four inches. A long silver key chain rattled when he walked.
"I'm Kahn," he said.
I introduced myself and held out my hand. He looked at it and said, "I know who you are."
I put my hand back by my side.
He picked up my British Khaki bag. It was a gift from Linda and a reminder of better times. I had packed shorts and T-shirts, tennis shoes, socks, an alarm clock, five books, a racquetball racket, and assorted toiletries, as if I were actually going to camp. Kahn tossed the bag in the cart and told me to get in.
We drove down a long concrete road that ran along the right side of the prison adjacent to a small golf course, and I wondered if inmates were allowed to play. We passed at least ten identical buildings that looked like dormitories. The two-story enclosed hallways that connected each building formed a wall surrounding the prison. The place was enormous. Enough room for thousands, I guessed.
I had done my research on prisons. Not as an adult, but in high school. I had been captain of my debate team. I understood the pros and cons of capital punishment, mandatory minimum sentencing, drug decriminalization, bail reform, and community-service sentences. I won the state debate championship advocating drug trials on convicts. I argued with great passion that testing new medications on federal prisoners would expedite the FDA's seven-year process to prove drug safety and efficacy, that the financial drain on taxpayers would be greatly reduced, and that these tests would give inmates an opportunity to earn money, pay restitution, and seek redemption, while thousands of innocent lives would be saved. When I was debating the merits of drug testing on prisoners, I never dreamed that I might someday be one.
Kahn stopped the golf cart at the last of the white buildings. He grabbed my bag as if it were his own now, and we entered through a metal door. The walls were newly painted, and the floor was well polished and shone like Kahn's shaved head. I walked behind him down a narrow hallway, and he pulled the chain from his pocket. He unlocked a door marked R & D. My heart skipped, and I felt panic coming on as we stepped inside.
In the Sanctuary of Outcastsbldavi1
Posted Sat Dec 12 00:00:00 EST 2009
This book is a must read for all! It balances the life changing experiences of a young man with several historical events. The book is such a great read that I struggled to put the book down, as I became wrapped up in the story and the individual characters. Neil White paints a perfect picture of the setting and events as they unfold, the reader is given a front row seat.
Beyond the story line is a great message for all to hear. The story line takes the reader on a journey familiar to many, the struggle to succeed in life and yet balance what is right. The story shows how one man was changed not so much by the punishment he received for his poor decisions, but by the "outcasts" who touched his heart. Many lessons can be learned from this moving book.
Thanks Neil for sharing your story with all of us!
6 out of 6 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.mgmtdoctor
Posted Sat Aug 15 00:00:00 EDT 2009
I had the good fortune to grow up with Neil White and see the outstanding man and writer he's become. His book "In the Sanctuary of Outcasts" speaks to the reader on so many levels. The one closest to my heart questions why success and impression management are so important to our generation. Although Neil was never an outcast to those of us who know and love him, he had to struggle with his self-perception of making a very public error in judgement and how that fit into his image of himself. If one is lucky enough to have a life changing event, even as tragic as Neil's was, one may be able to find what is important in life.
Neil White's message to us is to figure out what is truly important and work without ceasing to preserve and protect that.
Neil has written a book that should be required reading for everyone. It's engaging, thought-provoking, and a great read.
4 out of 6 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.KrisPA
Posted Sat Mar 27 00:00:00 EDT 2010
I MUST stop reading memoirs for awhile. This is the third one I've read over a two-month period and they ranged from absolutely horrible (Perfection by Julie Metz) to annoyingly bad (Weekends at Bellevue by Julie Holland). This one is not much better, except that the writing was at least competent. Neil White has got to be the whitest white man in America, and I say this as a white woman. I totally agree with Link, a black inmate, who says to him: "You was the m.f. they was talking about when they invented the word honky. You white to the core." White (Link and I both love the irony of his last name) is so concerned about his neatness and smell that he pays a fellow inmate to iron his shirts and hoards the cologne strips from inserts in magazines. He is so desperately, pathetically white and filled with such a grand sense of his own superiority that it is hard to have any sympathy for his predicament. After all, he brought about not only his own downfall, but also hurt others who trusted him and invested in his business. I kept thinking he would have had more money to devote to his business if he would have stopped buying yahts and all those nice things for himself and his family. The research about the leprosarium is interesting, but not enough to make up for White's lackluster writing style and his own general lack of personality. I found his devotion to Ella, the leprosy (Hansen's Disease)patient kind of weird. Towards the end of the book, his language elevates her to sainthood instead of just understanding her as an ordinary woman who lived with a terrible illness and still managed to live her life to the fullest. While White's unfailing kindness and effort to help the inmates is commendable, he is naive in thinking he can change everyone. This is not a bad memoir, but the author is the least interesting part of it. His bland vanilla personality is overshadowed by more vibrant personalities, such as Doc and Link and Ella. While White does seem to come to some sort of understanding about himself and his crime, this is still just another tale of a white man's greed in the corporate world.
3 out of 10 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.In the mid-1990s Neil White defrauded creditors out of their money and was sentenced to spend time in a federal minimum-security prison. He recounts his time spent in that prison in his memoir, In The Sanctuary of Outcasts, which gives the reader a glimpse into two societies shut off from the mainstream: prisoners and leprosy patients. The story fascinates from the start, when White tells of his wife dropping him off at the prison gatehouse. He is early, and he has to wait to be checked in. Everything about his check-in procedure is designed to let him know the rules from outside no longer apply, and he is not in charge of his daily activities. White is strip searched, assigned a room, and given a job. He has no door on his room, no privacy, and he learns not to offer to shake hands with the guards. He also soon finds out that the prisoners are housed alongside Hansen's Disease patients, more commonly known at lepers, and he must work serving them in the cafeteria.
Through White's account we learn the history of the leprosarium in Carville, Louisiana, a facility that started in the late 1800s as a place to isolate those with the disease. While Hansen's Disease can now be treated in a physician's office and patients are no longer isolated, those living at Carville predated treatment, and many remained at the facility even after it was no longer necessary for them to stay. Most had been there for half a century or more, and they had no other place to go.
At first White reacts as much of society has always reacted to these patients: he doesn't want to breathe the air they breathe, touch them, or eat food they have been around. He is afraid he will catch leprosy, turning his short prison sentence into one with consequences for the rest of his life. Gradually, he learns he has nothing to fear. He begins to seek their company whenever possible, and the lessons he learns from them help him find redemption for his own crimes and misdeeds.
Through White's eyes we also see the other prisoners serving time with him, a hodgepodge of criminals who include doctors, lawyers and accountants as well as drug dealers and robbers. This bizarre co-existing of prisoners and patients came about as the federal government tried to decide what to do with the facility at Carville.
Only White can answer whether he truly found redemption and learned to change his self-destructing habits for good. But his story of others who have learned to find grace and lead happy, productive lives despite being cut off from families and ostracized from the rest of society is inspiring as well as informative.
I had the chance to glimpse the inside of Carville myself when I was in college and interviewed a patient who was editor of the newspaper the colony produced. I'll never forget the feeling I had of a place that had been both sanctuary and prison for the patients. White captures the place well, and in writing about it, sheds a bit more light on this little known piece of American history that should not be forgotten.
3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.cindyld
Posted Thu Aug 13 00:00:00 EDT 2009
This book is wonderful! It spoke to me on several different levels and inspired me to make a road trip of 8 hours....just to fully understand the author's experience. What most of us would consider punishment worthy of embarrassment and the desire to "dissappear", became a cathartic message from Neil White. His time spent at the Federal Prison in Carville Lousiana (for "creative check writing") became one of his life's greatest blessings. As a nurse, I was inspired to research the history of Hansen's disease (formerly known as leprosy) and the misunderstandings which still surround it. And as a reader, I was fascinated with the picture that Mr. White paints of the Carville Federal Prison which also houses the last known victims of leprosy in the United States. His descriptions of his fellow inmates were at times worthy of a good belly laugh. But most important were the patients that he came to know and respect during his time at Carville. Anyone lucky enough to happen upon this book will find themselves as I did, utterly drawn in by the Neil's story and the story of the forgotten colony of outcasts.
3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.In 1993, Neil White confessed to the FBI that he conducted illegal bridge financing to keep his publishing business afloat when he found himself short cash. He spent one year at the experimental federal minimum-security pen in Carville, Louisiana. This facility included convicts and the last leper colony in the forty eight states. This terrific memoir looks deeply at the interactions of pariahs: criminal and health. The felons consisted of murderers, drug dealers, mobsters and a few white collar offenders. On the other hand the lepers ran the gamut of society including a mom whose newborn was removed from her immediately and wise eccentrics like the Earth Mother. Mr. White also scrutinizes the prison's employment staffs who deal similarly with the two radically different incarcerated groups. Crossing the three communities is caring Father Reynolds. This is a fascinating profound year that brings to life a diverse unique prison population.--------
Harriet Klausner
3 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
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Posted Sun Oct 20 00:00:00 EDT 2013
This is an amazing book. I couldn't put it down. Isn't life beautiful when we learn to find God's grace in our daily lives.... No matter where we may be.
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Posted Sat Dec 05 00:00:00 EST 2009
being a working class guy who don't know the big finance people's way of life. gives me hope in that he learned a good lesson from people with no financial help to offer him. .. good read
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.this book was an excellent read. at first you start hating the author because he is so self absorbed and just an overall jerk. it doesnt take very long for you to see that he is changing because of the life altering events happening. he really does become a much better person.
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Posted Sat Sep 12 00:00:00 EDT 2009
Wonderful book! Neil takes on a difficult job of taking a look inside himself and exposing his own disease of prejudice.
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Posted Sat Oct 19 00:00:00 EDT 2013
At first I found the author to be annoying and wasn't sure I wanted to continue reading --- I'm glad I did. Neill White brings you along on his journey of self discovery and change. And yes, he was annoying when the journey began --- he was honest about it.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted Thu Mar 28 00:00:00 EDT 2013
I just started the book and I'm enjoying it. His words flow smoothly across the page. Just
Enough description. To fully picture the scene but not too much where you will get bored. I
It writes like its nonfiction but you must remind yourself that's this is a memoir.
!
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted Thu Mar 07 00:00:00 EST 2013
This is not the book I thought I was going to read.I expected more history of Carville...Instead, most of what this book is about is a man doing a 1 year stay in a "camp" prison trying to figure out how to do the same thing again without getting caught. The worse thing that happens to him in this prison is that he has to get up at 4:00am to work & that when he goes to bed there is a hall light shining in his eyes.
The book ends "happily ever after" for him but his investors are devistated. At the end of this book I HATED this self-involved writer.
He says he's sorry...I think he's only sorry he got caught!
1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Posted Fri Apr 20 00:00:00 EDT 2012
I really enjoyed reading this book because it told a story of a man who allowed himself to be ruled by his own desires thoughtless of how it would effect those around him. It is only when he found himself in the company of outcasts for situations in their life that he begins to realize you can't just do what makes you feel good...but think of how it will effect the lives of friends, family and the ones you meet along the way. Good book...definately would recomment it.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted Sun Apr 18 00:00:00 EDT 2010
found this book a dull read..the title sounds really interesting...but that's were the interest ends..a white collar worker finds himself imprisoned with leprosy patients.....all this book tells us is about a man soul searching while awaiting his release..his soul searching would have been the same no matter where he was imprisoned... being a man of wealth and an attitude, he had not encountered people like ella or henry..there are thousands of ellas and henrys in this world but he was so self involved he never took the time to meet them...it took a jail sentence to bring this man down a notch... the book tells us of many famous people who shared jail time with him...at their release they all went back to the white collar crimes they had committed before...i hope mr white puts his time to better use....
1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Posted Sat Aug 02 00:00:00 EDT 2014
The tale of a con artist who, after prison, tries to make a buck off a story of the tragedy and suffering of others. Not particularly well written, this book offers no insight into a man who regrets what he's done. It's just a sham. Don't waste your time or money on this trash.
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Posted Sat Feb 15 00:00:00 EST 2014
Well worth your time and invesrment
Transformarional
Anonymous
Posted Sun Feb 09 00:00:00 EST 2014
A unique read that should inspire anyone who reads this story to reflect upon their own life and understand that it's never too late to change our preception of what's truly important in this one life we are given
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Posted Fri Nov 29 00:00:00 EST 2013
Did like this book. Stay on the right path Neil.
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Posted Sat Nov 16 00:00:00 EST 2013
I really liked the history in this story. That being said, I didn't care for the author that much. As other reviewers stated I think he was sorry that he got caught. I also guess I didn't realize prison was such a "nice" place. Seems strange to me. I didn't know about leopresy or Carvelle, so I did find it informative and interesting.
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Overview
Neil White wanted only the best for those he loved and was willing to go to any lengths to provide it—which is how he ended up in a federal prison in rural Louisiana, serving eighteen months for bank fraud. But it was no ordinary prison. The beautiful, isolated colony in Carville, Louisiana, was also home to the last people in the continental United States disfigured by leprosy—a small circle of ...