Lazarus and the Hurricane: The Freeing of Rubin Hurricane Carter

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, fast-paced murder investigation, and above all, a moving account of hope, humanity, and the indomitability of the human spirit.

A pair of new releases accompany the upcoming release of the movie The Hurricane, in which Denzel Washington plays former top middleweight boxing contender Rubin Carter, who spent 20 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. This entry, billing itself as "a basis" for the film, was originally published in Canada in 1991 and now appears with a new, three-page epilogue. Written by two Canadians who, despite no formal legal training, joined the legal battle to free Carter, it has the advantage of an unusual inside perspective. Imprisoned in 1967 for the slaying of two white men and a white woman the previous year, Carter had already published a memoir (The Sixteenth Round), become a cause c?l?bre and inspired the Bob Dylan song "Hurricane" when Chaiton and Swinton stumbled upon his story in the late 1970s. He had also been retried and reconvicted. The authors were led to Carter's story through Lesra Martin, a young black man they befriended on a trip to Brooklyn and whom they invited to be a part of their commune in Toronto where they had been "living together in harmony for almost ten years." A letter from Martin, whose first name is a corruption of Lazarus, to the fighter established a connection that resulted in the authors eventually moving to New Jersey to become full-time members of Carter's legal research team. Although it's a serviceable chronicle of Carter's fight for freedom, the book is strangely lacking in the passionate intimacy of an insider. Written in the third person, the text regularly refers to the authors themselves and their friends as "the Canadians." It asserts that they would "do anything" to help Carter's cause, but it doesn't shed much light, beyond an implied desire to right wrong, on their motivation.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In 1967, middleweight boxing contender Rubin "Hurricane" Carter was sentenced to three life sentences for murdering three white adults in a Paterson, NJ, bar. Both books demonstrate convincingly that this was a miscarriage of justice. Chaiton and Swinton were two members of the Canadian commune that worked for years to free Carter and that was, for a while, his home after his release from prison. Their book was originally published in Canada in 1991 and is the basis for the recent film The Hurricane (starring Denzel Washington). The commune first heard of Carter through Lesra Martin (Lazarus), who was a 15-year-old living in a tough Brooklyn neighborhood when Chaiton and Swinton met him on a business trip and brought him back to Toronto. Chaiton and Swinton devote most of their lively book to recounting Carter's struggle with the legal system and hellish prison conditions and to Lesra's adjustment to Canadian life. Hirsch, a former reporter for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, offers an excellent investigation of the Carter case and his life, including Carter's relationship with Lisa Peters, the domineering leader of the cult whom he married following his release from prison after serving 22 years. (Carter, as Hirsch notes, left the tension-filled commune because he had only traded one prison for another.) The internationally notorious Carter case was arguably the last cause c l bre of the Sixties Civil Rights-antiwar coalition. His tenacious fight for freedom was ultimately the greatest victory for this courageous battler. Both books are strongly recommended for public libraries, but because Hirsch's book provides courtroom details, delves into the actions of the commune, and updates Lesra's remarkable story, it's the preferred choice by a split decision.
---Karl Helicher, Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.