Guideless the Rivers’ Course

Book excerpt: Stuart Walker Purloin was given the name Margarite Ecclesia at birth. Never comfortable in a woman’s body, in early adulthood, Margarite completes transgender surgery in Holland after living through the hell of a small, southern town as a “transvestite.” Returning to Margarite’s hometown as Stuart, they are immediately targeted as a convenient solution to a murder case and sent to a maximum-security prison in Raiford, Florida; he is inmate 123047. The journey through this hell to Stuart is much like Dante’s journey through the inferno. During a life in the hell of bigotry and imprisonment, three Virgil-like saviors appear unexpectedly to guide Margarite, and then Stuart, through a modern inferno. A novel, Guideless the Rivers’ Course, tells a story of self-exploration, resolution, and redemption from the vagaries of prison for an inmate who used to be a woman, unexpected salvation for a good man who lived inside a good woman, and ultimately, the story of a town where ghosts emerge to protect one of its own.