This is an adventure story like Swiss Family Robinson or Huckleberry Finn or Moby Dick, only it’s an adventure of soul and spirit; it’s an adventure of faith. In these pages Bill Pelke takes us through some pretty amazing terrain: the vicious murder by four teenage girls of his grandmother, Ruth Pelke, the struggle and divisions in a family trying to cope with such a tragedy, a story, woven alongside Bill’s personal search for intimate and sustaining love with Judy (finding and losing and re-finding and losing), and at the epicenter of it all – Bill’s spiritual journey, which leads him to forgive 16-year-old Paula Cooper, the only one of the young girls who received a death sentence for Ruth Pelke’s murder. As Bill recounts, this seminal act of forgiveness of Paula Cooper precipitates the transformation of virtually every other relationship in hi life and his life -mission, which brings him to Rome and into the hearts of the Italian people, who gather 2 million signatures asking for Paula Cooper’s life to be spared from the death sentence. Just the international dimensions make this an amazing story.

I met Bill Pelke when he joined us on the road for two weeks in May of 1990 as we marched in religious pilgrimage from death row in Florida to the Martin Luther King Center in Atlanta, Georgia. I have to say that Bill Pelke is one of the most sincere and transparent and generous people I have ever met. There is not an ounce of guile in this man, and I understand at once his passion to devote his life energies to the abolition of the death penalty as a way of honoring his grandmother. I understood because I’ve been brought into that white-hot fire of passion against the death penalty myself, although I have not had anyone murdered in my family. I could see from the beginning of our long trek on the road that Bill was stable and trustworthy and could handle media interviews, so as we made our way down the road and media requested to speak to a member of a murder victim’s family, I turned many of them over to Bill Pelke.

I find the fresh writing in this book interesting. Bill’s never written a book before, and he just sort of belts all these stories out, weaving together outward events and inward reflection in a way that amazes me. I love his homespun language: the “forgetter’s key” hidden in a special place outside his grandmother’s house and the description of a prosecutor as a “banty-hen rooster.” Sometimes his understated way of describing things stuns me, which, I suspect, only a sincere, first-time writer like Bill can pull off: “I can tell you first hand that Florida in August is very hot,” (about Vietnam) “heading off to war was a strange feeling,” (his feelings after his grandmother’s death) “I had been involved in what I call anguishing prayer.’

So, reader, prepare yourself for a freshly told and amazing soul adventure. Some of life’s deepest conflicts are in this story: life or death, compassion or vengeance, love or hate. We all know in some way or other the soul struggles that Bill Pelke is talking about in these pages, and his transparent account calls us all to be better persons and to earnestly pray that we might get caught up is such a full-soul mission and purpose that gets Bill Pelke out of bed every morning and fills him with missionary zeal. Not all will identify with the religious zeal that fires Bill Pelke, but we all know passion when we meet it, and we can all pray to be consumed by such a lofty passion that frees us from ego and self-serving. This is a refreshing adventure story. Fasten you seat belt. You’re in for quite a ride.

Journey of Hope...from Violence to Healing
By Bill Pelke