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Oprah’s Next Book Club Selection Announced: THE SUN DOES SHINE: HOW I FOUND LIFE AND FREEDOM ON DEATH ROW

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Vanessa Diaz

Managing Editor

Book Riot Managing Editor Vanessa Diaz is a writer and former bookseller from San Diego, CA whose Spanish is even faster than her English. When not reading or writing, she enjoys dreaming up travel itineraries and drinking entirely too much tea. She is a regular co-host on the All the Books podcast who especially loves mysteries, gothic lit, mythology/folklore, and all things witchy. Vanessa can be found on Instagram at @BuenosDiazSD or taking pictures of pretty trees in Portland, OR, where she now resides.

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Oprah Winfrey has revealed her latest highly-anticipated book club pick: The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row by Anthony Ray Hinton with Lara Love Hardin. This is one of only a handful of times that a memoir has made it into Oprah’s Book Club, whose last few picks include Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, Tayari Jones’ An American Marriage and Imbolo Mbue’s Behold the Dreamers.

the sun does shine book coverAnthony Ray Hinton is an African American man who in 1985 was arrested and charged with two counts of capital murder in Alabama. Hinton, then age 29, was innocent, but was convicted and sentenced to death by electrocution. He spent thirty years in custody on death row before he was finally exonerated and released with the help of civil rights attorney and author Bryan Stevenson. The book is Hinton’s memoir, a reflection on his wrongful imprisonment and his determination to remain hopeful and joyful in the most dire and unjust of circumstances.

Winfrey, who made the announcement on her website earlier this morning, calls Hinton a “remarkable storyteller,” likening his story to that of  an epic novel. “I’m sure you’ll think a lot, like I did, about how it is possible to find life and freedom on death row.”