Posted in Book Reviews

A couple weeks ago someone recommended a book for me and asked me to post what I thought when I was done. I decided that it might be a good idea for me to do that for all of the books I’m doing for this summer reading. These won’t be as long as my regular reviews—just a short summary and a few thoughts on the book.

The very first book that I read was recommended to me by a good friend from church. Twice Pardoned by Harold Morris is the true story of one man’s transformation to freedom in Jesus while in prison.

As the book begins, Harold Morris tells of his childhood and how he began to fall in with the wrong crowd as an adult. Although he never intends to fall into crime, he soon gets mixed up with two men who are into some illegal activities. Because of his involvement with these two men, Morris is falsely accused of murder. The two men testify against him, and Morris receives a life sentence in jail. The story journeys through Morris’s life in prison and tells of how he gets saved. By the end of the book, Morris is pardoned not once, but twice. Once by the earthly authorities, and once through the blood of Jesus.

I enjoyed the majority of this book very much. Morris’s account of his time in prison was quite interesting. It gave me a new feeling of compassion for people in those circumstances. While the second half of the book, in which Morris told of many of his ministry opportunities after he got saved, moved a little slowly for my taste, I think it was necessary in order to show the difference between his hopelessness before he was saved and his love for God afterwards. It was exciting to see how God worked in his life.

All in all, it was a great book. I would attach a caution to it, however. Morris tells candidly (although not graphically) of his life as a wild unbeliever and the state of moral decay in the prisons. I would recommend that teens ask their parents to flip through this book, just to make sure that it is appropriate for the teen to read.