In the Sanctuary of Outcasts By Neil W. White III

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The emotional, incredible true story of Neil White, a man who discovers the secret to happiness, leading a fulfilling life, and the importance of fatherhood in the most unlikely of places—the last leper colony in the continental United States. In the Sanctuary of Outcasts

Can I give it 6 stars?

A real treat for me was to have a few moments here and there to sneak off and read a few chapters of this book. I knew how the story ended but I was endeared to the characters whether they were inmates or patients and could not wait to find out what they were going to get into next.

Some of the reviewers of this book could not get past Mr. White's high opinion of himself early on in his life. Some folks have to learn things the hard way and Mr. White was one of them. He was under the impression that he was above others and if he did something illegal, he would never have to pay the consequences. A prison term taught him differently. One of my favorite parts of the book was when he wrote how the leper patients (who were comfortable with themselves and each had a positive outlook) were not the disfigured ones. He himself was the disfigured one on the inside.

I loved this book! Memoirs Incarceration is supposed to both punish and rehabilitate. It always certainly does the former, but far less often accomplishes the latter. This book is a story of the latter.

The author was a financial fraudster as was my present bf! Is he rehabilitated? That remains to be seen. and was sentenced to one year in a facility that was both a leper colony and a prison. The prisoners had defective characters but the patients with leprosy did not. Their disease had given them the extra dimension of enduring, making the best of life with all the restrictions of having to live in a facility because of their disabilities.

The author changes from a man who will do anything to impress the world with his material goods and success no matter how he comes about them, to an introspective person who understands that what other people think is by and large meaningless, it's how he thinks of himself, how he values himself and how important it is to have character.

His story is illuminated by his many friends, especially his best friend Elsa, an old lady, an amputee who is witty and insightful and never lets any challenges get her down. There are many other lovely stories of his friends varying from prison officials to convicts and the leprosy patients, some are full-blooded stories, others just vignettes, but all add to our ability to see how and what changed Neil W. White from a financial leech on society to a decent man who in this book says, Mea Culpa. Memoirs A driven writer and entrepreneur, Neil White, played fast and loose with other people’s trust, manipulated money around in a way that was frowned upon by our legal statutes, and found himself a guest of the government at a penal institution that also served as America’s last leper colony. In the Sanctuary of Outcasts tells of his one year stay there, what he saw and learned, not only about our criminal incarceration system but about the history of leprosy, both the textbook learning and the sort that no book can teach, about true acceptance and understanding, overcoming one’s worst and becoming one’s best.



Holding your family life together and coping with a year in the joint is put in perspective when you are surrounded by people who are literally wasting away, but who may have more substance to them than those more fortunate. The tale here is primarily White’s journey, his change from a person 100% concerned with the trappings of financial success, a disciple of “greed is good”, to a reflective, mature person, one more focused on doing good, and living simply and honestly. He comes to terms with his internal flaws in an environment defined by externalities.

White offers a wonderful array of characters, from Ella, his legless muse to Doc, who has developed a remarkable way to attack many dire illnesses, to Link, a street thug, to an understanding priest. The list goes on. Many of the characters White encountered in his year in stir are briefly noted, but he offers a rich array of their interesting tales and this enhances the storytelling. He also offers us a peek into the strain his incarceration placed on his family. There are grainy photos in the book of some of the people he writes about, including his wife and children. I imagine that is how they looked attached to wall of his cell.

I suppose one must wonder if White truly found some light, or, a gifted manipulator, he simply found a nifty way to come across as a better person than he is. We can not really know this from his book, of course. If it is the latter, he deserves credit for doing a pretty good job of it. But I suspect there is more than a grain of truth to his tale of personal growth. Either way, In the Sanctuary of Outcasts is a warm, fast, engrossing and satisfying read.

==============================QUOTES

P 169 – Finally, in a sanctuary for outcasts, I understood the truth. Surrounded by men and women who could not hide their disfigurement, I could see my own.

P 187
“How can I face the people of Oxford? What will people think?” I said.
“What peoples think,” Ella said,”ain’t none of your business.”
That night, in bed, I pondered this novel idea—to act without seeking praise from others. A good portion of my adult life had been spent daydreaming about what others thought of me. I imagined and re-imagined accolades, awards, trophies, applause. Just wait until they see this! I would say to myself, not even sure who “they” were.

Journalism had been the perfect profession to spread the good news of my accomplishments. More than sixty thousand households—every neighbor, friend, and relative—received a monthly sampling of my works bound in the finest paper money could buy. People stopped me on the street to talk about a never-before-published photograph I had discovered, or a thought-provoking editorial I had penned. And I was more than happy to stop and elaborate. At times, it made me dizzy. I felt like I was fulfilling a destiny.

Now, this hunt for adoration felt demeaning. Memoirs 4 Stars = Outstanding. It definitely held my interest. Memoirs I did not hate reading this book, but I wanted to punch the author repeatedly through it. What an arrogant, spoiled person.

I did enjoy learning about Carville, and I wish the book would have focused more on the lepor colony than Mr. White's inability to admit he did something wrong. I will look into leporcy more on my own, it seems like an interesting topic that I know little about.

I am so looking forward to tearing this guy apart at our book club! Memoirs

This is a difficult book for me to review. On the one hand it is highly readable and for the most part very engaging, but on the other hand it's, well... It's hard to exactly define the negative, which is why this book is difficult for me to review. It's difficult to understand why the author wrote this book. There is some humor, but it's not funny enough for that to be the focal point. There are some insights in it, but it's not insightful enough for that to be the thrust of the book. There is history, but again, not enough for it to be a history book. There is evidence of some personal change, but not enough to warrant categorizing it thusly. There is a little bit of a lot of things, which is what makes it more engaging, but it also makes it tough to figure out the point of the book.

Ostensibly, this is a coming of age memoir, which is odd considering the author was 33 years old when the events took place. Usually coming of age stories are for people much younger than 33. Which leads me to conclude, and this is backed up with numerous attitudes the author relates, that he was horribly immature at the age of 33. Superficial, self-absorbed, selfish, and greedy, the author lands in a federal minimum security prison essentially for writing checks to himself. Not exactly a heinous crime, and the author goes out of his way to demonstrate how different, how refined, how metrosexual -- how better he is compared with all the other inmates. Not used to living the high-life myself, I found it difficult to relate to Mr. White's lifestyle and thought processes, and felt alienated from him.

But then, about halfway through the book, after his wife announces that she is divorcing him (I couldn't help but wonder who was more shallow: Mr. White or his wife, a woman who divorces her husband partway through his one year sentence because she can't stand the shame he has brought on her), he has an apparent revelatory moment where he decides to change his life, give up his consuming desire to look good in front of other people, and focus his life on his children. That's all fine and well, but at the end of his one year in 'country club prison' he admits that he hasn't changed. Kind of a let-down, and it made me wonder if his ah-ha moment was all an act to look good in front of other people.

The definite bright side of the book was the attention paid to the leprosy patients, with whom Mr. White and the other prisoners shared living space. The fact that the leprosy colony existed and functioned, what life was like for the resident patients, and the perceptions of people toward them was eye-opening.

In short, though the book is very readable and entertaining, it is difficult for me to come away from it without viewing the author as a spoiled, rich man, who has a polished veneer, sought to change, but remains spoiled and rich, selfish and self-absorbed on the inside. Memoirs White lived through an experience that could have made for a remarkable story. He spent 18 months in jail with a doctor who invented treatments for Lyme disease and certain forms of cancer; the mob lawyer Frank Ragano; and dozens of leprosy patients.

But I think White could have told his story better. I wasn't interested in his personal reflections at all. White arrived at the prison afraid of the leprosy patients, and then he suddenly fell in love with them, and I still don't understand exactly why. If White had written more about the other characters (at least as much as he wrote about his love of cologne, moving money around, etc.), I think I would have had more of an emotional investment in the story.

I really doubt Ella (one of the older leprosy patients) responded with cute little Disney-like words of wisdom every time White asked her a question. I want to know what she said when she wasn't giving him life-altering advice. By casting Ella as simply a fairy-tale-godmother of sorts, White strips her of her humanity (ironically, since what the leprosy patients fear most in the book is being written off as sub-human).

But did you know that more than 3,000 people in the U.S. have active cases of leprosy? And that it's estimated that about a third of the cases are a result of contact with infected armadillos? And that, in some areas, up to 20% of armadillos have leprosy? Don't pet the armadillo. Memoirs I grew up not far from Carville, La. where the last remaining leper colony was, my father drove me there a couple of times to show the pristine white buildings, how they had a huge town of their own where they could get anything a person on the outside got. Louisiana then decided to put some of their prisoners from the white collar section into the colonization. I was hoping as a reporter and journalist Mr. White would find some of the stories about the past and how Carville came to be. It lightly touched on leprosy aka Hansens Disease and more so on his poor me I stole from people and made them homeless, went to jail and my wife divorced me for it...good! Thoroughly disappointed in this one. Memoirs In the Sanctuary of Outcasts is well written, compelling, and entertaining. My reader-brain loved White's interesting characters, vivid descriptions, and witty dialogue. The writer in me was drawn to Neil White's use of contrasting themes and images: the quiet contentment of the leper colony vs. the violence and unrest of the adjacent prison, the peaceful setting of the oak-lined plantation turned leprosarium against the sparse accommodations of the prison cell, the misshapen limbs of the sick vs. the obsessive body-building of some inmates, and most importantly - the arrogance and narcissism of the memoirist entering the prison contrasted with the self-awareness and introspection of the man leaving.

I agree with the reviewers who disliked Neil White intensely in the first half of the book, but isn't that the point? He was a thoroughly unlikable con man, bilking his friends for millions and his mother of her life savings without regard for anyone but himself. He made no attempt to learn from his early mistakes or to take advantage of the second chance he was given even before getting caught and arrested.

White's descriptions of the patients he befriended are touching - the simple wisdom of Ella and the gentle friendliness of Harry. His humorous accounts of the inmates are great fun - Link with his crude real world perspective, Doc's intellectual tunnel vision, and Jimmy Hoffa's lawyers descriptions of his client's love of farting. The variety of the short scenes makes the book a quick read, along with the appeal of the Southern gothic charm the Mardi Gras parades, high-stakes Monopoly games with a financial shysters , and the smuggling of everything from muffalettas to prostitutes into the facility.

There are lessons to be learned here, in particular Ella's cola bottle story, which ends with the moral than a leopard (with a nod to Link) can't change his spots. When White worries about how to be a different man when released, Ella reminds him that the characteristics that led to his downfall will never go away. He'll always be proud, needy of attention, and egotistical. She teaches him he must find a way to channel those flaws into achievements that benefit others.

And the other important lesson is the one White learns about the superficiality of his world (and modern society.) His aversion to the stumps of lost limbs when he first meets the leprosy patients results from an obsession with beauty that led him to date beauty queens and undergo plastic surgery to hide the scar on his forehead from a childhood accident. What he learns from the patients at Carville is that real beauty comes from a simplicity of spirit and a generosity of self that have nothing to do with outer appearances.
Memoirs This book has an intriguing concept, but the execution was barely tolerable. The white collar criminal/journalist went into a federal prison/leproasaurium as a shallow, self-absorbed, self-aggrandizing guy and emerged 18 months later as a slightly less shallow, self-absorbed, self-aggrandizing guy. His decision to write about his experiences seems pretty calculated and I got tired of hearing how handsome & privileged he had been and about all the beauty queens he dated in college. He does seems genuinely sorry that he got caught for check-kiting but not all that sorry about the check-kiting itself. He seems to feel worse about losing his reputation (and his credit) than about losing his wife.

It was interesting to learn about the leprosy patients. It was certainly an odd social experiment to house federal prisoners and leprosy patients in the same facility, but I'm not sure it was a good experiment. Memoirs