"A genuine quest for the myths of the unconscious. [A work of] true power." — Andrew Sinclair. An inmate sentenced to life at San Quentin escapes the horrors of his incarceration through astral travel in this boldly imaginative work by a master storyteller. Darrell Standing endures the agonies of beatings and extended periods in a straitjacket by withdrawing into intense dreams of his past lives. Standing's fantasies transport him from his harrowing confinement to identities as a nobleman in medieval France, a shipwrecked seal-hunter, an Englishman in 17th-century Korea, and an advisor to Pontius Pilate.
This final novel by the author of The Call of the Wild is both a tale of life in solitary confinement and an epic journey across space, time, and history. Jack London delivers a moving indictment of the brutality and corruption of the prison system that is also a celebration of the power of imagination to rise above misery and to keep hope alive.
