C’Mone C. Skye grew up on the mean streets of Chicago’s West Side, where she routinely witnessed sad, bloody and terrifying events. Here, she spent way too much time bearing the burden of her twin
brother’s crimes. “Where’s Sloane?” friends would ask her. All too often, her answer was “He’s back in prison.” It seemed that by his teens, he had become trapped in the cycle known as recidivism.

Decades later, C’Mone was living in Milwaukee, 90 miles north of her hometown. It was during one of Sloane’s rare periods of freedom that she got a call from a Chicago police officer. He was hunting for her twin, and this time the charge was serious enough to put him away for many years. 

It was then that C’Mone decided to find the truth: Why was Sloane repeatedly in jail? How could she help him make this incarceration his last? And what exactly did his problems have to do with her
own?

As a retired energy-industry analyst, C’Mone not surprisingly took an analytical approach to exploring these issues. She ultimately viewed her family through the lenses of home, government, and church, three institutions that had always played significant roles in their lives. She discovered that she and Sloane were suffering from “twin sins.” And she found the solution in the biblical story of Joseph, whose experience as a prisoner in Egypt unveiled legal and spiritual lessons pertinent to recidivism–not only for her own family but for anyone trapped in its clutches.

 That solution evolved into first a memoir, and then the entire ministry known as A Prisoner’s Pardon.