Mother California

By Kenneth Hartman
Atlas & Co., $22.00, 197 pages

In February 1980, just out of California’s juvenile prison system, drunk and stoned 19-year-old Kenneth Hartman stomped out and punched a homeless man into unconsciousness in a park outside of Long Beach. He was arrested the following day and began a new era of criminal murder.

Mother California is a story of redemption behind bars, and traces Kenneth Hartman’s gradual conversion to a compassionate person—a reforming activist who’s quite ashamed of his crimes. His three decades in prison takes him through a half-dozen institutions and most of the time was spent in solitary confinement.

After years in the prison system, Hartman discovers an avocation for writing and the meeting through a cell phone of his future wife and her child. One is taken on a journey through the anarchy and moral code that rules in some prisons where physical punishment is the sole form of control. Hartman traces his newly discovered spiritual and literary inclinations and learns to accept responsibility as a family man. The last chapter is the discovery of the development of an honor program which helps motivated prisoners to escape future incarceration.

Reviewed by Claude Ury