Island of Hope

There existed an island of crystalline sand, palm trees, exotic birds, and beautiful flowers. It was an island of solitude and repose, of escape. It was his island, his alone, enduring only in the abyss of Delvin’s mind. She was Glory. Beautiful, sweet, dead Glory. Their lives intertwined—her death, his innocence—linked by the hands of a cold-blooded murderer. But somehow she lived, on the invisible island, in the mind of a complete stranger, and the magic of this island enabled her to teach Delvin about the persistence of hope in a hopeless world. It was on this Island of Hope that young Delvin learned to live life, even though it wasn’t his life to live. His youthful goals had been to escape the odds most of his peers faced, those of young black men. He’d once dreamed of defeating these odds that guaranteed turmoil, violence, hopelessness. But now his dreams were locked away in a prison cell, the result of a crime he hadn’t committed. This is the story of his demoralizing ordeal, his vacillations between hope and despair, and his eventual resurrection. This heartfelt story hopes to teach us about the unpredictability of life and about the perseverance of hope. As Herman Melville once said, “Hope is the struggle of the soul, breaking loose from what is perishable and attesting her eternity.”