Have you ever made a bad decision? I think everyone has a decision they regretted making at some point in their life. For some people, those decisions are so major that they upend their lives. This is true in the case of Toby Dorr. Toby was a successful middle-aged mother and wife. She had started a dog training program in a local prison and became national news when she fell in love with a convict (John Maynard), used a dog crate to help him escape, and ended up on the run. This book is Toby’s story.
I will admit here, that somehow, I missed this
national story in 2007. That was the
year between Kile being born and Daniel being born. I was pregnant with Daniel and sick with hyperemesis
gravidum. A lot of news slipped by
me. This story was all new to me. Since I’ve finished the book, I’ve listened
to the Dateline Podcast about the case.
Living with Conviction is a powerful memoir that I
could not put down. Toby’s story was
riveting. She told the story starting
from the moment her and John crashed and were arrested by police. She finds herself in jail and grappling with the
fact that she will be there for some time, and that her relationships with her
family have been altered forever. In
flashbacks, Toby tells the story of the budding relationship of her and John
and also the story of her life up to the point.
She was a woman who had accomplished a lot in life and had a husband and
two sons. During her time in prison she started
to understand that she had used being busy to hide the emptiness she felt
inside. She was put in charge of her
siblings at five years old after her father was in a horrific accident. Since that time, she always thought she had
to take care of everyone and not worry about her own happiness. While
in jail, Toby was able to think through her life and put everything in perspective.
Toby’s story made me realize again how our prison/jail
system is broken. It was odd how they
kept transferring her all over. The most disturbing part to me was that the
prison and jails seemed to be mostly filled with people who had mental problems
and needed help. The system has just
abandoned them to be imprisoned without help.
I was also disturbed that when there were serious medical issues with
the prisoners, they were just ignored.
There has to be a better way to do things.
I’d like to think I would be a forgiving person if my
friend or relative was in the same situation as Toby. I was disturbed on how her sisters treated
her, and my heart broke for her as a mother when her sons no longer wanted to
see her while she was in jail or afterwards.
What was amazing is that her cellmates and friends she made in jail
treated her better than many in her own family.
She was able to make real connections with different ladies and form a
real sisterhood. One friend was Lisa
Montgomery, the woman who killed another woman to steal the baby still in her
womb. Reading this made Lisa seem a real
person to me, someone who was wounded, and not someone just from a headline. These relationships helped to put Toby back
on track with her life.
Favorite Quotes:
“But she is also a daily reminder that none of us is
as bad as our worst mistake.”
“My husband didn’t notice ow much Dad’s cancer
affected me, but John Maynard did. He
saw right into my soul. I’d been waiting
all my life for someone to see me, to notice me, to love me; John did.”
“Perhaps from a different perspective, Senorita’s
story did mimic my own. It only took one
act of desperation to spur the wheels of fate.”
“I learned that grief is neither good nor bad, it just
is. What mattered was how I dealt with
it.”
Book Source: Review Copy as part of the TLC Book Tour. Thank-you!
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