Love and Justice: A Story of Triumph on Two Different Courts by Maya Moore
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I am not a huge basketball fan so I had never heard of Maya Moore until a casual conversation with my friend last week. He mentioned that she had married someone who had been in jail. He then googled her and we watched a brief interview with the couple. In that interview they mentioned this memoir. I was intrigued and knew I wanted to read it.
I chose to listen to the audiobook which I loved. It is narrated in alternating chapters by both Maya Moore and Jonathan Irons. Hearing the story in their own voices made it all the more powerful.
Maya was a phenom basketball player who through her family was introduced to a man who had been in jail since he was 16 years old. At the time he was sentenced to 65 years. He insisted that he was innocent. They developed a friendship which became a romance. This book discusses her life as a pro basketball player running parallel to his life in a maximum-security prison for a crime he did not commit.
The book details his years of fighting to prove his innocence and her eventual help until he was finally freed after 23 years behind bars. Both are very devout Christians. The book is very heavy on religion which could be a turnoff for some readers.
This book was an emotional experience for me. I was angry as I listened to the shenanigans of the people who are supposed to uphold the law. Even when it’s clear there is an injustice there was no real motivation to correct it. The need for criminal justice reform is so clear in accounts like this. Even if he had been guilty, 23 years would have been a long sentence for a 16-year-old kid. I just think that this person has spent more than half of his life incarcerated. Years of his life that he will never be able to recover. I cannot imagine all that he endured for no reason other than being poor and not having the means to fight for himself.
There was also so much joy in the final outcome. The fact that love was able to triumph, that justice triumphed was uplifting. I found myself rooting for him, for her, for their family, for love, for truth and justice.
There was also so much sadness because you can imagine how many other people (especially poor people) who are wrongly imprisoned, but they don’t have anyone on the outside who cares enough to fight for or with them.
I listened to the final hour on my ride to work this morning and I cried the entire time. I literally had to stop and pull myself together before I went into my class. This was one of several times where anecdotes in this story moved me to tears.
Overall, this is an engaging, emotional story. I am so glad I was introduced to this couple and so glad I decided to listen to them tell their story. This story helps to restore faith in humanity and the power of faith, love and support.
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