Oprah Winfrey’s validation turns memoir to bestseller

Oprah Winfrey’s book club recently made Anthony Ray Hinton’s memoir, ‘The Sun Does Shine’ its latest pick, making it the first nonfiction chosen in the last 20 years. According to the Washington Post, this sent it, from No. 6,861, to the No. 1 spot on Amazon.com within hours, according to The Washington Post, displacing Bill […]

Oprah Winfrey’s book club recently made Anthony Ray Hinton’s memoir, ‘The Sun Does Shine’ its latest pick, making it the first nonfiction chosen in the last 20 years. According to the Washington Post, this sent it, from No. 6,861, to the No. 1 spot on Amazon.com within hours, according to The Washington Post, displacing Bill Clinton-James Patterson thriller ‘The President is Missing’. 

Hinton was wrongly imprisoned in the United States for nearly 30 years. Published in March, his book tells of his conviction for killing two fast-food restaurant workers during separate robberies, and his time spent on death row. His efforts to overturn the conviction reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 2014 unanimously ruled he had been denied a fair trial. Hinton was freed after new ballistics tests contradicted the only evidence, an analysis of crime-scene bullets, that connected Hinton to the slayings. When he finally got out, the words he spoke to loved ones greeting him, “the sun does shine”, became his memoir’s title.

Hinton’s legal case was taken on by the Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative and its director, Bryan Stevenson, whose 2014 book ‘Just Mercy’ is considered essential reading about the criminal justice system. Stevenson provided the foreword to ‘The Sun Does Shine,’ which Hinton wrote with Lara Love Hardin. Her other credits include co-writing ‘The Book of Forgiving’ with Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu.

Winfrey described the selection as a worthy exception. “This story reads like an epic novel and it is all true,” she said. “You will, throughout the book, try to imagine yourself, falsely accused, and in a 5-by-7 cell for 30 years. He is a remarkable storyteller and when you read it you’ll be swept away.”

Hinton, 61, likened himself to Job as a man who lost everything, but eventually saw his life restored. Speaking of his time in jail, he said, “Every day was hell, every night was hell, every waking moment was hell.” But upon leaving, “The sun was shining brighter than I could ever remember it shining.”