PRISONERS OF THE WILLIWAW

What would happen if three hundred hardened convicts petitioned the United States Government for an abandoned island where, accompanied by their families, they would be set free to earn their own way?
Overwhelmed by prison budgets and prison riots, the government agrees and sets the prisoners free on windswept, treeless Adak in the Aleutians, the site of a former ‘hard duty’ Navy station.
Prisoners Of The Williwaw is the story of the power struggle between the idealistic leader of this expedition, convict Frank Villa, and a smooth prison boss, James T. Gilmore.  Frank Villa opens a school, arranges jobs for people in a small assembly factory and calls for free elections.  ‘Boss’ Gilmore opens a house of prostitution, sells booze, drugs, and guns, and schemes to take over the island one way or another.
Frank’s struggle is internal as well as external.  He strives to overcome the effects of prison on his psyche.  A convict must be passive; a man in charge of a community must take command.   A convict must build a wall inside himself against any relationship with a woman; a free man has to leave himself open to love.
The strife between Villa and Gilmore accelerates when their wives arrive and unexpected complications develop.
These conflicts play out against a backdrop of constant rain, vicious windstorms (williwaws), escape attempts, and a coup  by a new group of prisoners from the federal penitentiary in Florence, Colorado, the worst of the worst.

To read the opening chapter, click here.

Reader comments:

"Two million Americans now sit in prison.  Here’s a new/old idea that might just provide an alternative. It’s a hell of a story."
    Don McQuinn, author of the trilogy Warrior, Wanderer, Witch as well as With Full Honors
    and The Prisoner Within.

"Last week Friday Ed Griffin's book, Prisoners of the Williwaw, arrived in the mail from Amazon.com. I read it on Saturday. My interest was primarily to see if Ed Griffin could capture the "essence" of life on Adak, and he does a very good job.  He proposes Adak as a prison community. Earthquakes have broken the pipes, the wind has destroyed quite a lot, and the prisoners are very unwilling to depend on each other for their lives, which of course is exactly what they must do.

It sure seems that Ed has personally done some tundra stomping along the routes that he describes in his book, particularly going to Shagak Bay, Finger Bay, climbing toward Razorback mountain.  But it’s not  just a travelogue of Adak; it is a good story and I read it in one sitting. You may find that prisoners' lives and the lives of younger sailors are not far different, especially on Adak where the same barriers exist for sailors as it did for the prisoners in Ed Griffin's story."
      Michael Gordon, Chief Data Processing Technician, USN (Ret.), 2 tours of duty on Adak, 
      1976-78, 1987-88

"It is the story of an elemental battle on so many levels, the struggle against nature and the weather paralleling the struggle between the factions. The basic idea of what is true freedom, and how do you get there, is thought-provoking."
     Sue Legault, Journalist and Spiritual writer

"The book describes how offenders are forced to live and work together, resolving the conflicts in life."
      Ricardo Scarpino, Matsqui Federal Penitentiary,

"Wow.  That was some book.  I couldn’t put it down!"
     Sue Harper, School Principal

"I found the Prisoners of the Williwaw easy to read and exciting."
     Doug Funk, businessman.

"Just finished reading Ed Griffin's 'Prisoners of the Williwaw.' This is a great read. Not only a gripping fictional journey, the story offers up some interesting ideas about the ethics of incarceration. This from someone who knows a bit about our penal system."
     Phil Jones, Technician

"With both an outside and inside view, Griffin has grasped an interesting concept for an alternative to prison."
     Scott Hulshof, Matsqui Federal Penitentiary

"It's a page-turning read that kept me engaged in the infrastructure of inmate societies and their power to destroy or recover the soul."
     Janice Hodgkinson, writer and office assistant. 

"I found the story to be an interesting concept, with a potential for being a reality."
     B. F.Nagey, Jewelry Designer, Chicago.

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© Copyright Ed Griffin 2003.  All rights reserved.