The Reckonings: Essays on Justice for the Twenty-First Century

This extraordinary collection of essays pursues questions about the nature of justice in a culture obsessed with retribution.

In 2014, Lacy M. Johnson was giving a reading from The Other Side, her "instant classic" (Kirkus Reviews) memoir of kidnapping and rape, when a woman asked her what she would like to happen to her rapist. This collection, a meditative extension of that answer, draws from philosophy, art, literature, mythology, anthropology, film, and other fields, as well as Johnson's personal experience, to consider how our ideas about justice might be expanded beyond vengeance and retribution to include acts of compassion, patience, mercy and grace.