White refers to Carville prison story as ‘our book’

• By GREG LANGLEY
• Books editor
• Published: Jun 14, 2009

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“My name is on the book, but it’s a collective effort,” Neil White said by phone from Arkansas June 5.

He is on a signing tour for his book, In the Sanctuary of Outcasts. White said the stories in the book are from the inmates he met at Carville, both prisoners and Hansen’s disease patients. Those stories, coupled with the efforts of friends, editors and readers, are why White refers to the book as “our book.”

He especially wanted to tell the stories of some of the patients with whom he bonded — after being very afraid of their disease at first. “I got to Carville pretty regularly,” he said. His best friend, the one he was most fond of, was a woman named Ella Bounds who had been a patient at Carville since she was a young girl. She figures prominently in the book.

White couldn’t tell the patients’ stories without telling his own, he knew. He also expected some criticism. It might appear that he was exploiting his prison experience to make money. “I really struggled with  whether I should publish this,” White said. Then he decided his children needed to know the story. “It was for my children,” he said. If the book does make some money, White has plans for it.  “I couldn’t do this without sharing a healthy part of the proceeds with the people I hurt,” he says. In the book White explains how he kited checks and wound up costing investors and vendors thousands of dollars. He has been out of prison 15 years, but he still feels deep responsibility for the financial ruin he sowed as a magazine publisher. “When you hurt people, you hope it doesn’t damage their lives too much.” The last thing he wants to do is exploit the friendships he made in prison.

“I treasure those friendships,” White said. He wouldn’t want to do it all again, though. “I hope I don’t go through any experience that gives me as good a material for a book as this (did),” he said.“I didn’t write it to teach a lesson. I just though it was an amazing time and place with a collection of unusual people.”