Red Emma’s

Through intimate portraits of four exonerated prisoners, investigative journalist Alison Flowers explores what happens to innocent people when the state flings open the jailhouse door and tosses them back, empty-handed, into the unknown.From the front lines of the wrongful conviction capital of the United States—Cook County, Illinois—investigative journalist Alison Flowers recounts profoundly human stories of reclaiming life, overcoming adversity, and searching for purpose after exoneration.As she tells each exoneree’s powerful story, Flowers vividly shows that release from prison, though sometimes joyous and hopeful, is not a Hollywood ending—or an ending at all. Rather, an exoneree’s first unshackled steps are the beginning of a new journey full of turmoil and uncertainty. Flowers also sheds new light on the collateral damage of wrongful convictions on families and communities, challenging deeper problems of mass incarceration and the criminal justice system."Having experienced the unending nightmare of being wrongfully convicted, and the mind-blowing trauma that hits like a tidal wave after release from prison, I can attest that Alison Flowers has nailed it - and then driven it home. This book will help anyone living with or experiencing profound trauma, and sometimes that's all we can ask for, to have a measure of understanding."—Damien Echols, former "West Memphis Three" death row inmate and author of Life After Death"Exoneree Diaries exposes the deeply flawed system that puts so many innocent men and women behind bars, and also reveals the long-lasting trauma that these survivors of our 'justice system' have endured. In the wake of the tragic suicide of beloved exoneree Darryl Hunt, Flowers gives us critical insight into the human beings whom we as a society have wrongfully caged, and leaves us grappling with the questions of how we can better embrace and support them once their innocence has been proven, their release achieved–and their ordeal, in many ways, still just beginning."—Jen Marlowe, author of I Am Troy Davis and The Hour of Sunlight: One Palestinian's Journey from Prisoner to Peacemaker