After the Murder: My Affair With a Felon - Paperback

by Mary Elizabeth Van Pelt (Author)

After seeing an inmate interviewed on a television program Mary began writing to inmates in state prisons. A few years later in a prison visiting room she met Mark. Mark was twenty-five and serving twenty-to-life for a liquor store robbery that went bad and ended in murder. Mary, a college student, became enamored by the long and beautiful letters he wrote. She didn't know that this murder, the death of someone she never knew, would become a transforming power in her life more than thirty years later.

Author Biography

Mary Elizabeth Van Pelt is a humanitarian devoted to social change. She worked for twenty years in the field of Human Services but has come to rely more on individuals and grassroots organizations than on the current system of using government funds to solve social issues. The author believes in Restorative Justice, a process that involves, to the extent possible, the individuals who have been hurt by a crime-the offender, the victim and other stake holders. The criminal justice system focuses on punishment; Restorative Justice works to heal and restore the web of damaged relationships. Van Pelt's first book, In Silence I Speak: My Journey through Madness, is a memoir about outgrowing the services that the mental health system offers, it is also published by Mercury HeartLink. The author makes her home in the San Luis Valley of Southern Colorado near the Rio Grande. Her rural neighbors include deer, hawk, raven and an occasional glimpse of the red fox.