| This is a novel of prison brutality and reincarnation. Darrell Standing, a university professor serving life imprisonment in San Quentin for murder. Prison officials try to break his spirit by means of a torture device called "the jacket," a canvas jacket which can be tightly laced so as to compress the whole body, inducing angina. Standing discovers how to withstand the torture by entering a kind of trance state, in which he walks among the stars and experiences portions of past lives. |
