Review: In the Sanctuary of Outcasts by Neil White

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial; 1 edition (June 1, 2010)
• ISBN-10: 0061351636
• Source: Publisher

Neil White was convicted of  fraud for kiting checks and ordered to serve one year in a federal prison.  However, he wasn’t sent to your typical prison, instead, he was sentenced to serve time at Carville, the last leper colony in mainland America. White is instantly concerned about his well-being and the safety of his health.  He’d never seen a leper before and wasn’t quite familiar with how the disease was spread.

“This place was bizarre, like something out of Alice in Wonderland or The Twilight Zone. Nuns and monks.  A leper with no fingers.  A man who howls like a dog.  A doctor with an impotence injection device.  Inmates fat enough to be in a carnival.  A guard who squelches my questions, but seems just fine with prisoners sunbathing.  And a legless woman chanting like Dorothy in Oz.  How the hell did I end up in here?”

Within minutes of his arrival, White meets quite the interesting cast of characters residing at Carville, both inmates and patients.

The first is Doc, his roommate.  Doc has recently invented an injection device that cures impotence.  He’s quite proud of his invention and is anxious to get some marketing advice from White.

“There’s this stigma about giving yourself an injection in the base of the penis…It doesn’t hurt.  I’ve done it.  With clever marketing, I can get around it, don’t you think?”

White is assigned his first prison job, writing the menu on a board in the patient cafeteria. It is here where White is forced to come face to face with the patients. One of the first patients he interacts with is Ella Bounds, an elderly woman in an antique wheelchair.  Ella has been a patient at Carville since she was twelve years old and lost her legs to the disease.   White immediately stops complaining about the six hours he’s spent there; it’s nothing compared to Ella’s “sentence.”   White and Ella start talking, and White learns to see past the disease to the individual:

There was something remarkable about this woman.  The way she held herself, and her eyes. She seemed to possess unwavering confidence.  Or maybe it was strength.  But at the same time, she was gentle and friendly. . . For a moment, I had forgotten she might be contagious.  She was so vibrant…it was hard to believe Ella carried a debilitating disease.

Ella and White form quite the friendship. Ella inspires White to see past his status as inmate and be hopeful about his future.  White decides to not be a federal convict.  He would pretend to be an inmate, and collect the stories of the leprosy patients and the inmates.  He would put a voice to a disease that wasn’t spoken of, documented the lives of patients whose family abandoned them once they were diagnosed with the disease.

Inmates were also interviewed, one of the most interesting was Link.  Link gave White the nickname of Clark Kent due to his resemblance to the nerdy news reporter. Link referred to the patients as “leopards.”  You would think White would steer clear of Link, but instead he spent time with him.

Link told everyone-inmates, guards, even the leprosy patients-that I was out of place…in his own way, he was saying exactly what I wanted them all to know.  Link told them I was different.  He made certain everyone knew I didn’t belong here. I didn’t have to say a word.

Jimmy Harris was a patient who was writing his own book about life in quarantine, King of the Microbes. White begins to learn a great deal about the history of treatment of individuals with leprosy.  In most cases, lepers were forced to live in jails or dilapidated homes known as pesthouses.  If they weren’t forced to live in quarantine, they were in constant fear or their lives or the lives of their loved ones.  People still believed that leprosy was a form of punishment from God, and had no problem using violence to lepers.  It wasn’t until the 1920s that Carville, a free leprosarium, was established in the US.

Once White becomes closer to some of the patients, he begins to feel sympathy for the lives they have been forced to lead. He begins to see similarities between them and himself-“Prisoners and leprosy patients might have been considered outcasts by most of the world, but we were stuck here together.”  After a while, White is able to see past the disfigurement and to the beauty within:

Intimate, prolonged contact, it seemed, made everything commonplace. Beauty and disfigurement disappeared with familiarity.  Beauty queens became ordinary; leprosy patients did, too.

White is forced to come to terms with the person he’d become:

Finally, in a sanctuary for outcasts, I understood the truth.  Surrounded by men and women who could not hide their disfigurement, I could see my own.

White continues to learn and grow after his interactions with Ella.

“…Ella carried her leprosy like a divine blessing.  She had faith that she would be healed in heaven.  She embraced the life she believed God had schosen for her on earth. She had transcended the stigma that crippled so many.”

In the Sanctuary of Outcasts is a engaging, emotional, and detailed account of White’s time as prisoner in Carville Leprosarium. White arrives in Carville one person and leaves a completely new individual.  While told from White’s point of view, the reader gets a unique look at many of the patients and inmates who resided at the institution.  Going in, I didn’t know much about the premise of the book.  I would have never imagined just how much is packed into such a short book.  Let’s not forget that I typically don’t read/review nonfiction, yet this one grabbed hold of me and I couldn’t bear to put it down.  I highly recommend this one; I learned so much about personal strength and survival.

Thank you to TLC Book Tours for giving me the opportunity to review this book!

About Neil White

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