The riveting true story of the crime, punishment, and transformation of a Seattle boy who came of age inside the adult prison system and who, once on the outside, rebuilt a new life as a man.
After twenty years of incarceration, little was familiar to newly released Willard Jimerson. His once-gritty city was a technology hub. An African American was president. And with a six-inch screen, he could access a vastly changed world. From Claudia Rowe, author of The Spider and the Fly, comes the story of the life Willard took and the life taken from Willard, the story of everything he had to regain and was yet to discover.
Claudia Rowe's Time Out is part of Missing, a collection of six true stories about finding, restoring, or accepting the losses that define our lives-from the mysterious to the inspiring. Each story can be read-or listened to-in a single sitting.
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[The night Willard Jimerson's life would change forever began with a visit to Yinka Thomas's bedroom window]***
(Amazon Original Stories, 31 July 2018, ebook, 49 pages, Prime Reading)
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I had trouble connecting with Time Out. This tale tries to elicit sympathy for Willard, sent to an adult prison when he was thirteen for murdering a fourteen-year-old girl. I could find no sympathy. He watched the girls he was friends with beat and terrorise another girl then took out a gun and shot her twice in the back while another friend shot her a third time. He was sentenced to twenty years in an adult prison. Time Out tries to make you feel sorry for Willard, too young to truly be responsible for what happened, given too harsh a prison sentence. Not harsh enough if you ask me. Murder is murder and I don't care how young the killer is. He should never have been released. The murder is cold and calculating, Willard has no emotion when he shoots her. The fact his teenage girlfriend ends up marrying him after he's released sickens me. I'm glad Willard changed in prison and expressed remorse for what he did but that does not detract from the life he took. I have no sympathy for cold-blooded killers.
