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Never before had Daniel Bergner seen a spectacle as bizarre as the one he had come to watch that Sunday in October. Murderers, rapists, and armed robbers were competing in the annual rodeo at Angola, the grim maximum-security penitentiary in Louisiana. The convicts, sentenced to life without parole, were thrown, trampled, and gored by bucking bulls and broncos before thousands of cheering spectators. But amid the brutality of this gladiatorial spectacle Bergner caught surprising glimpses of exaltation, hints of triumphant skill.
The incongruity of seeing hope where one would expect only hopelessness, self-control in men who were there because they'd had none, sparked an urgent quest in him. Having gained unlimited and unmonitored access, Bergner spent an unflinching year inside the harsh world of Angola. He forged relationships with seven prisoners who left an indelible impression on him. There's Johnny Brooks, seemingly a latter-day Stepin Fetchit, who, while washing the warden's car, longs to be a cowboy and to marry a woman he meets on the rodeo grounds. Then there's Danny Fabre, locked up for viciously beating a woman to death, now struggling to bring his reading skills up to a sixth-grade level. And Terry Hawkins, haunted nightly by the ghost of his victim, a ghost he tries in vain to exorcise in a prison church that echoes with the cries of convicts talking in tongues.
Looming front and center is Warden Burl Cain, the larger-than-life ruler of Angola who quotes both Jesus and Attila the Hun, declares himself a prophet, and declaims that redemption is possible for even the most depraved criminal. Cain welcomes Bergner in, and so begins a journey that takes the author deep into a forgotten world and forces him to question his most closely held beliefs. The climax of his story is as unexpected as it is wrenching.
Rendered in luminous prose, God of the Rodeo is an exploration of the human spirit, yielding in the process a searing portrait of a place that will be impossible to forget and a group of men, guilty of unimaginable crimes, desperately seeking a moment of grace.
From the Hardcover edition.
- Sales Rank: #1085294 in Books
- Published on: 1999-10-05
- Released on: 1999-10-05
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.50" h x .66" w x 5.50" l, .90 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 304 pages
- ISBN13: 9780345435538
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Amazon.com Review
Not since Truman Capote's In Cold Blood has a writer so humanely evoked the complicated, harrowing lives of violent convicts. At turns haunting and inspiring, God of the Rodeo is novelist-journalist Daniel Bergner's riveting account of a year spent visiting the maximum-security prison at Angola, Louisiana, also known as "the last slave plantation." Initially there to report on the prison's annual four-weekend rodeo in October 1996 for Harper's, he was able to extend his stay for a full year when he was granted complete, unsupervised access to the seven prisoners with whom he became most closely acquainted.
In God of the Rodeo, he introduces readers to rodeo champion Johnny Brooks, a 41-year-old "lifer" incarcerated for a murder he committed at the age of 18, who is engaged to marry a civilian woman he met at the rodeo. He's also the most promising candidate for parole. There's Terry Hawkins, a man who tries to seek salvation for the violent murder of his boss, the grotesque details of which haunt him, and Danny Fabre, plagued with comically large ears he desperately wants corrected by plastic surgery almost as much as he wishes to learn to read past the 6th-grade level. Perhaps the most striking figure is the stern, spiritual warden, Burl Cain, a self-proclaimed prophet who genuinely believes in redemption for even the most violent offenders.
Written with the eloquence of a poet and the perceptive eyes of a painter, Bergner's extremely well wrought, unforgettable book offers a rare glimpse into the hearts and souls of men who commit violence, finding hope and courage where few dare to look, without ever losing sight of the horrific crimes that landed them in America's most isolated prison. --Kera Bolonik
From Publishers Weekly
Bergner (Moments of Favor) offers a fascinating portrait of the inmates of a maximum security penitentiary (Angola) in a state (Louisiana) where a life sentence means 'til you die. Providing the frame and the protagonists is Angola's annual fall rodeo, where inmates compete in such events as "Guts & Glory," trying to grab a $100 chip from between the horns of an angry bull. Wondering why these men would submit themselves to such harm for little glory and less money, Bergner decided to follow six of them from one year's rodeo to the next. With a comfortable sympathy for warden Burt Cain and his program of faith and rehabilitation, Bergner spent his first five months freely interviewing guards and inmates. But in January, Cain suddenly demanded first editorial veto, then a cut of the royalties. Refusing both, Bergner lost entrance to the prison and while a lawsuit reinstated his access, the interruption (of interviews and narrative) opened Bergner's eyes to the warden's despotic paternalism (his new programs included shoe-shine detail and car-wash detail) and inspired greater confidence from inmates. Whether by dumb luck or design, Bergner's half-dozen subjects turned out to be inspired ones. A couple of them seemed simply criminals doing time; the others were looking for something transcendent, whether through God, family or rodeo. Bergner brilliantly balances the pathos of this life (e.g., the fear of being buried in a flimsy state-issued coffin) with the violent facts of the crimes. Had Bergner been a less scrupulous journalist and glossed over the rupture in the center of his account, it might have made a better narrative. But it would not have been so honest.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Rodeos are not usually associated with maximum-security prisons, yet every October for 35 years, Angola Prison in Louisiana has staged a full-scale rodeo viewed by thousands of spectators. Journalist Bergner wrote an article about the rodeo for Harper's magazine, then expanded the material into this volume, which traces a year in the lives of six convict rodeo riders. The text suffers at times from disorganization and from padding, but nevertheless it gives a vivid picture of this bizarre event. Bergner describes how the inmates willingly participate in the rodeo because they have been convinced by prison authorities that it amounts to absolution of their sins. The Louisiana public, many still heavily racist, come to watch the convicts "thrown every which way." It has all the earmarks of a Roman circus. The most fascinating of all is the modern-day Caesar, Warden Burl Cain, who is noted for both his evangelism and his skulduggery. Since this is not a typical prison story, it may appeal to the general reader.?Frances O. Sandiford, Green Haven Correctional Facility Lib., Stormville, NY
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
An Unexpected Story
By Douglas Shumaker
This is a fascinating book. I thought it would focus on the rodeo that Angola holds each October, but that's just a starting point. The rodeo gets him there, but like all good writers, Bergner realizes that a larger, deeper story exists. He sets out to spend a year at the prison. But, as often happens to good writers, the story that he expects to find is not the one that he finds. The book goes into a completely different direction that he, or readers, ever expected. Once the twists take place, I felt pulled into the book. There are times when I wanted more information, such as the end when he relates what happened to the people he discussed. And there are times when I skimmed, feeling like there were more details than necessary. But, overall, the book is a winner.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
excellent
By David C N Swanson
"God of the Rodeo," by Daniel Bergner, 1998, is a great book, an excellent account of life incarcerating and being incarcerated in Louisiana's Angola penitentiary, a former slave plantation on which much has changed and much has not. The book is also about the struggle required in order to write such a book, a struggle that has recently been made much harder. Compare the following quotes.
(1)"There are countries in which public establishments are considered by the government as its own personal affair, so that it admits persons to them only according to its pleasure, just as a proprietor refuses at his pleasure admission into his house; they are a sort of administrative sanctuaries, into which no profane person can penetrate. These establishments, on the contrary, in the United States, are considered as belonging to all. The prisons are open to everyone who chooses to inspect them ad every visiter may inform himself of the order which regulates the interior." - Gustave de Beaumont and Alexis de Tocqueville, 1833
(2)"The United States Supreme Court, in a series of decisions going back to the 1970s, had helped to ensure that the nation's prisons stayed isolated and unknown, that criminals, once sent away, could be forgotten. . . .
" . . . A recent federal law, the Prison Litigation Reform Act, driven through Congress to ensure that incarceration not be too costly to the taxpayers or too joyful for the convicts, will likely free Angola from federal oversight within the coming months." - Daniel Bergner, 1998
Bergner handles, by his own account, many difficult situations with wisdom and grace. He proves his points and labels his speculations as such. He is neither cynical nor gullible. My one complaint is that he includes a passage toward the end (Chapter 15) in which he simultaneously preaches vengeance and quotes Jesus, apparently oblivious to the irony. Proclaiming any moral feat (in this case love of an enemy) impossible is always a moral disgrace. However great the majority of Americans who are unable to overcome the thirst for vengeance that Bergner attributes to all people, there is a minority being ignored, erased from the "natural" and "normal." This attitude is to blame for much of the horror depicted in Bergner's book.
January 1999
9 of 12 people found the following review helpful.
Disappointing
By A Customer
The positive reviews I have read here are mystifying. Bergner is a talented writer, for sure, but I really felt as if he mailed in this book more than anything. It sure didn't seem like he spent a year at Angola prison or even in the vicinity. Seemed more to me as if he flew down there every once in awhile to see what's up. The book starts off GREAT, the first third, and then proceeds to fall apart with the not-so-interesting details of his fight with warden Cain to retain his access. Once he wins that fight it's as if the author has lost his steam. The charcters, even warden Cain, don't seem to come to life and their story, the one he tells, just isn't so compelling. I just came away feeling that the author was worn out. Too bad, too. I had high hopes for this one. Want to read a book that DOES make this kind of access work? Try Pete Early's The Hot House, about his two or three years inside of Leavenworth.
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