Same kind of different as me

Big black homeless man meets major league art dealer and helps him change for the better.

Sounds like a feel-good Hollywood production, doesn't it? This is actually a combined biography of two men and the woman who brought them together. Denver Moore, formerly homeless and illiterate co-author, tells a story we don't want to believe could be true - especially not in our "enlightened" times. Ron Hall, the other major player in this book, makes it clear that if Moore is guilty of anything, it is understatement.

We're not talking about the down and out scruffy guy with a heart of gold or a high flyer who just needed a little nudge to fine-tune his focus. We're talking about an ex-con (armed robbery) who hated everyone around him, and an ambitious social-climbing money-hound who sold out or betrayed everyone who mattered to him. Add Hall's wife, Deborah, to the mix and you have a fabulous story of change, love, redemption, forgiveness, caring, growth, healing, trust, and interconnectedness.

The story alternates between Denver's and Ron's viewpoints. I particularly liked that format because it made it easy to compare their early years, and later in the narrative, it was interesting to get the two descriptions of one situation. At times it was hard to believe I was reading about the same event.

Lynn Vincent has done a wonderful job of pulling two vastly different narrative styles together into one cohesive story. Instead of smoothing out the differences, she plays on them and uses them to distinguish between narrators. These men don't have easy stories to tell. It took a whole lot of fortitude to go back through their pasts and lay everything bare for others to gape at, but these men are survivors and their story is inspiring and gut-wrenching all at the same time. Same kind of different as me should definitely be on your reading list for 2009.

Same kind of different as me : a modern-day slave, an international art dealer, and the unlikely woman who bound them together by Ron Hall & Denver Moore with Lynn Vincent. Published in 2006 by Thomas Nelson. ISBN: 978-0-8499-1910-7.