Neil White had a great life!! He was doing what he loved, publishing magazines, and he had a great beautiful family and lots of friends. He was the type of guy that if a friend was in trouble and needed help Neil was there to help. He loaned money to friends and family, was active in the church and invested in his community but then something went wrong. He realized that his bank accounts couldn’t handle his lifestyle and instead of asking for help himself he just starting moving money from one account to another. Then one day the phone rang and a friend at the bank asked to him to come in for a meeting. During an audit, the bank realized what Neil had been doing and the FBI became involved. Neil went to court was found guilty and a judge sentenced him to serve 18 months in a federal prison. The prison was located in Carville, Louisiana, and Neil thought–Okay, it is close enough where at least my family can come visit. His two children were young and he wasn’t sure how to explain all of this to them. “Daddy is going to camp. That’s what I told my children. A child psychologist suggested it. ‘Words like prison and jail conjure up dangerous images for children,” she explained. But it wasn’t camp…” and Carville was no ordinary prison.
When Neil walked in the prison gate he knew something was different about Carville. The grounds were beautiful, live oaks lined the driveway and the buildings were all built in Colonial revival style Federal architecture. Not only did the facility house federal inmates but Carville was home to the last people in the United States disfigured by leprosy. The “patients,” some who had lived there for decades, had formed their own small community and were protected from the outside world–that is until the state of Louisiana thought it would be a good idea for part of Carville to become a federal prison. Neil realizes–that in this place full of nuns, inmates, and leprosy patients, rich history and where the Mississippi River runs north–he is going to begin a journey that will change his life and the way he looks at things.
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He befriends eighty-year-old Ella, who has been in Carville since developing leprosy as a child, and other “secret” people and “wacky” inmates and begins to realize the value of simplicity and friendship. 
Infirmary at Carville 
Sacred Heart Catholic Chapel
Neil White will be here at Lemuria for a signing at 5:00 p.m. today and a reading will follow around 5:30 p.m.
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