{"id":987,"date":"2024-11-12T14:28:00","date_gmt":"2024-11-12T14:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=987"},"modified":"2024-11-12T14:28:00","modified_gmt":"2024-11-12T14:28:00","slug":"book-review-chained-birds-a-true-crime-memoir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=987","title":{"rendered":"Book Review | Chained Birds: A True Crime Memoir"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Chained Birds: A True Crime Memoir<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

by Carla Conti<\/p>\n

Genre:<\/strong> Memoir \/ True Crime<\/p>\n

ISBN: <\/strong>9781964730066<\/p>\n

Print Length:<\/strong> 436 pages<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Reviewed by John M. Murray<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong>A compelling true crime expos\u00e9 of a corrupt prison program and the lives forever changed when it was brought to light<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Carla Conti is a true crime journalist and staunch prison reform advocate. In Chained Birds<\/em>, Conti becomes part of the story herself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She was asked to tell the story of Kevin Sanders and the conditions he experienced as a convict serving his sentence at Lewisburg Prison in Pennsylvania. Sanders\u2019 legal team soon hires her to help his defense, specifically a series of unjust assault charges.<\/p>\n

It all started with a snowball, and it would, pardon the pun, snowball into something more. One inmate launched a snowball at a corrections officer before assaulting him\u2014the officer\u2019s revenge led to an orchestrated rec cage assault that involved Sanders through no fault of his own. This is the event that brought Sanders to Conti\u2019s attention, as well as the prison\u2019s Special Management Unit, which turned out to be rife with abuse , corruption, and violence.<\/p>\n

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As a journalist and advocate, she became a fierce supporter not only for Sanders but for reformation of the entire prison system. The trial was just the beginning as Conti recounts her life before, during, and after the case, including the political strife, family drama, and even the writing of this book.<\/p>\n

Conti writes with an endearing balance of humor and passion, and she is a driven and intelligent advocate for those without a voice\u2014even before working with Sanders. Without her assistance on the case, he might have disappeared into the system and the SMU program may have gone unnoticed.<\/p>\n

A large swath of this memoir is devoted to Sanders, with several sections edited from his own words or letters he gifted to Conti. He was not a perfect man and he tried his best to overcome the various issues plaguing him\u2014drug use, gang affiliation, prison torture. Conti steps back and lets Sanders be his authentic self, resulting in a two-person memoir that is at turns heartfelt and bittersweet.<\/p>\n

The book is nonfiction and drawn from real documents and transcripts, but Conti artfully dramatizes things to feel almost like a legal thriller. As she points out at the beginning: \u201cThis is a work of nonfiction. Certain names and places have been changed for the privacy and protection of some story participants. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or real events is absolutely true.\u201d<\/em><\/strong> The \u201creal\u201d aspect of the story makes the harrowing elements\u2014prison violence, a potential attack against Conti\u2019s and Sanders\u2019 life\u2014even more explosive.<\/p>\n

Chained Birds<\/em> is like two great books in one: a captivating true crime story that exposes a deplorable prison program and an engrossing memoir of a journalist making a difference.<\/p>\n

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Thank you for reading John M. Murray\u2019s book review of Chained Birds: A True Crime Memoir <\/em>by Carla Conti! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.<\/p>\n

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The post Book Review | Chained Birds: A True Crime Memoir<\/a> appeared first on Independent Book Review<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chained Birds: A True Crime Memoir by Carla Conti Genre: Memoir \/ True Crime ISBN: 9781964730066 Print Length: 436 pages Buy from Amazon Buy from Bookshop Reviewed by John M. Murray A compelling true crime expos\u00e9 of a corrupt prison program and the lives forever changed when it was brought to light Carla Conti is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":988,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bookreviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/987"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/987\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}