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CORETTA SCOTT KING
Lazarus and the Hurricane
This remarkable true story begins in a Brooklyn ghetto when a group of Canadians meets Lesra (Lazarus), an illiterate black teenager who wins their hearts. They end up bringing him to Toronto to help with his education, and while learning to read, Lesra finds a copy of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter’s The Sixteenth Round. It was a book destined to change Lesra’s life forever, and the lives of his adopted family.
Rubin Carter, the subject of Bob Dylan’s song “Hurricane,” was a number one middleweight boxing contender who had been wrongfully imprisoned after a white jury found him guilty of the murder of three whites in 1966. A huge public outcry followed the publication of The Sixteenth Round in 1974, culminating in a retrial, which was a virtual reenactment of the original travesty, with Carter receiving the same triple life sentence.
Moved by Lesra’s passion, his adopted Canadian family contacted Carter and reinvigorated the legal battle. The inspiring relationship that ensued forms the heart of Lazarus and the Hurricane— a riveting legal drama, a fast-paced murder investigation, and, above all, a moving account of hope, humanity, and the indomitability of the human spirit.
SAM CHAITON and TERRY SWINTON, friends and business partners in Toronto, adopted Lesra into their communal family and subsequently fought for the release of Rubin Carter. They have recently donated 4.9 metres of textual records, including their investigative notes and legal research in the Carter case (1966–1988), to create the Rubin “Hurricane” Carter collection at York University Libraries. https://atom.library.yorku.ca/index.php/rubin-hurricane-carter-collection
Reviews
Young Lazarus will win your heart and the Hurricane will inspire you.
This book vividly illustrates the pain of a dream deferred and the joy of
opportunity fulfilled.
-Coretta Scott King
The Hurricane Carter case is one of [the twentieth] century’s most im-
portant legal sagas… Spellbinding, a must-read for anyone interested in
justice and human drama.
-F. Lee Bailey
This book represents all the future possibilities of good old down-home
human relationships. Power. The ability to define, know and realize the
phenomena of corrupt power structures… then, in a committed, dedicated, caring way, make the phenomena act in a desired manner. Literally
powerful!
-Bobby Seale, co-founder of the Black Panther Party
This book is like me—floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee.
-Muhammad Ali
The first book [The Sixteenth Round] was a heartbreaker. This one is a
mind-breaker, abolishing parts of the nervous system.
-Bob Dylan
My grandmother said there’s always the force of evil and the force of
good out there. And my mother used to say that bad can give good a hard
time, but good will always win. This wonderful story bears that out.
-Roberta Flack
Rubin Carter lost twenty years of his life to justice gone wrong. He rose
from the living dead of false imprisonment, in part because Lazarus and
the Hurricane is what real justice is all about—truth in action. The moral
energy of Carter, and the authors, in righting a monstrous misdeed of the
system is a real inspiration.
-Michael Harris, author of Justice Denied
Determination, desire and compassion [are] the heart and soul of the
book. If a book about the triumph of the human spirit interests you,
Lazarus and the Hurricane is definitely worth reading.
-The Leader Post (Regina)
Carter is plainly an extraordinarily tough and resilient man, his mind even quicker than his fists. … A real-life thriller about wrongful imprisonment and the crusading spirit.
-The Globe and Mail
The feel-good book of the year.
-The Toronto Sun
A double-fisted tale of liberation.
The Vancouver Sun
A legal thriller… amazing..
-Peter Gzowski, "Morningside," CBC Radio
Thrilling and appalling … A Canadian tale of triumph.
-The Toronto Star
Superbly written…fast-reading…
-Quill & Quire
Lazarus and the Hurricane takes the reader on a shocking and often
frustrating roller-coaster ride through the American legal system.