It is “stunning”, the Pulitzer-winning reporter Lawrence Wright said, that Redemption, his new book about women on death row in Texas and the nuns who minister to them, turns out to be published at a time of intense focus on capital punishment.
Two cases dominate headlines: the Trump administration’s abandoned plan to livestream the firing squad execution of Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, and Tennessee’s failure to kill the convicted murderer Christa Pike by lethal injection. Away from the headlines, in Texas and elsewhere, executions continue.