Although the writing is less than stellar, this is worth reading as a fascinating true story of two men who share the same name and who had some similar life experiences growing up, but whose lives eventually take very different paths. My major disappointment with this book is that the author's tone is curiously flat throughout much of it, despite the fact that he writes about a number of extremely dramatic and harrowing experiences both he and the other Wes Moore had.

Probably the tone the author was striving for was one of humility as he describes the major obstacles and personal failings he overcame through the care and concern of his family and friends as well as his own eventual ownership of his abilities and talents. That same sort of flatness of tone carries through to the sections of the book in which he describes the many small ways in which the man whose name he shares fell through the cracks and sadly ended up serving a life sentence with no possibility of parole. I imagine that the author probably wanted to convey a sort of "there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I . . ." feeling rather than sensationalizing the sad life story of the man who is the subject of the title, but the low-key, sort of "just-the-facts-ma'am" narration left me feeling rather sad and hopeless.

Still, the story itself is an important one to be told. While it would be simple to say that the Wes Moore who landed in prison was just unlucky or that the author had some positive personal quality the other Wes Moore lacked, I think the far more disturbing truth is that when families are fractured and children produce children, the outcomes are likely to be heartbreaking.