Yours for Eternity

April 28, 2014
Echols (Life After Death) was on death row in Arkansas in 1996 when he began to correspond with Davis, a landscape architect living in New York City. Over the next 16 years, they wrote each other thousands of letters. The letters trace the evolution of their relationship through friendship to romance and marriage, and also address the complexities of Echols’s appeals. Echols had been convicted for the murder of three young boys in West Memphis in 1993, and the case of the “West Memphis Three” became a cause célèbre, generating documentary films and books. Forensic evidence and claims of jury tampering led to the release of all three men in 2011. Echols and Davis are both competent writers (and postscripts and footnotes add some context to the correspondence); however, as intelligent and passionate as the lovers are, there’s little for a reader not already engaged with Echols’s odyssey. In the end, it’s the quotidian details that leave the greatest impression: Echols’s description of his Buddhist practice, or Davis’s story of how she smuggled fruit into prison via a string tied to her underwear. Agent: Henry Dunow, Dunow, Carlson & Lerner Agency.

May 15, 2014
A former prison inmate and his wife share the personal letters they exchanged during his incarceration, offering insight into their remarkable, if slightly obsessive relationship.Landscape architect Davis began writing to Echols (Life After Death, 2012) in 1996 after seeing a documentary about the murder case that landed him on death row. She soon found herself drawn to not only Echols' story, but also the man himself. The pair wrote to each other several times per week. They talked about everything from "chastity belts [and] whirling dervishes" to "17-year locusts and Paganini." Within just a few short months, Davis and Echols had fallen in love despite the fact neither one of them knew what the other looked like. After a brief summer visit, the profound spiritual and emotional connection deepened to include a physical component that surprised both with its intensity. Speaking of her desire for Echols, Davis writes, "[m]y body is alive with it...it is agony. Echols in turn reveals his wish to have Davis with him, "flesh against flesh [with] nothing to separate us." Execution and the ups and downs of the appeals process hung over the pair like a shadow, yet Davis and Echols still managed to create an elaborate world of "magickal" possibility from which they drew strength. Believing that they were going to "build a history that stretch[ed] to infinity," they married in 1999. The fight to keep their love, hopes and dreams alive continued until Echols was finally released in 2011. Then the couple began a new struggle to lead a normal life free from the barriers and surveillance that had formerly defined their relationship.Reconstructed from thousands of letters the pair exchanged over 16 years, this tender and unusual narrative offers a rare, courageously intimate view of a love that should never have survived and yet did.

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January 1, 2014

In 1996, while sitting on death row after being wrongly convicted with two associates for the murder of three boys in West Memphis, AR, Echols received an encouraging letter from Davis, who had seen a documentary about the West Memphis Three. They married three years later. Echols follows his affecting Life After Death with this account of a seemingly impossible love.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 15, 2014

This is both a universal and a wildly unconventional love story told through letters. Echols (Life After Death), of the West Memphis Three--three teens convicted of the early 1990s murders of three boys in West Mempis, AR--was a death-row inmate before being released after serving 18 years for that wrongful murder conviction. In addition to legal representation and celebrity advocacy, Davis, a New York landscape architect, was a key participant in this endeavor. Davis married Echols in 1999, while he was in prison, about three years after viewing a documentary about the case. These letters recount the progress of their relationship. The book's arrangement is chronological, covering 1996-2011, with updated postscripts. Focused on their highly idealized feelings for each other, the letters also provide insights into Davis's background and personality, the overwhelming difficulties of overturning such a conviction, and the frustrations of nurturing a relationship under the conditions of incarceration. The missives tend to be short, intimate, and poetically written. VERDICT As a compilation of letters that supplement other works on this case, this book will appeal mainly to readers seeking a more personal perspective. Recommended for its vivid portrayal of an extraordinarily successful prison romance. [See Prepub Alert, 12/16/13.]--Antoinette Brinkman, formerly with Southwest Indiana Mental Health Ctr. Lib., Evansville

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.