Bank Notes Reviews
Where is justice?
This book is a heartbreaking study of how perspective defines fairness. Let’s face it, justice—by definition—is what’s fair to you. But Keith Giammanco’s journey from divorced father to day trader to bank robber to prison inmate turns point of view upside down. If you keep your money in a bank—and who doesn’t—it’s not fair that someone should enter your financial institution and take some of it for himself. If you work in that bank, it’s not fair that someone in a “boonie” hat should destroy your sense of security. If you are the children of a boonie hat bandit, it’s hardly right that you should have to deal with the fallout of your father’s crime spree. If you are a cop, you see the mistakes and cruelties and injustices of poverty and lack of education all day every day, knowing that you can only save a few of them. If you work in the criminal justice system, it must be frustrating to deal with criminals day after day—all who believe their issues should be your top priority—and you are inexperienced and overworked and everyone needs more than you have to give. If you are a judge, they can’t pay you enough for the aggravation and the endless struggle to balance the law with compassion and morality and security. If you are a politician, you are torn by competing interests, ideas, supporters, and resources. If you work in corrections, you must deal with fear and ignorance and anger, and juggle the interests of inmates and employees and the public. If you are an inmate, it must be horrible to lose your present, and a huge part of your future, for something you did a long time ago, when you were another person. If you fall in love with an inmate, how can it be fair that you can never see or touch the object of your love? And for society, how do we coexist painlessly?
Caroline Giammanco’s book asks a simple question: Where is justice? Unfortunately, societies, since the beginning of civilization, have searched for ways to define it, believe in it, and achieve it. We argue over it; each believing in our own version of a wiggly concept. No one gets out of this life without screwing up. It’s how we deal with our own mistakes and those of other humans that has confounded us for thousands of years. Because, in the end, what’s fair to us is what’s fair.
A good read that will leave you pondering.
Published by Argus Publishing www.a-argusbooks.com
Represented by Jeanie Loiacono, Loiacono Literary Agency www.llallc.net