A sensational-and true-prison escape story in the tradition of Papillon and Midnight Express. Edward Padilla, an American, is the only living person ever to escape from the world's foulest prison-Lurigancho Prison in Peru. Here is the true story of his four-year ordeal and his miraculous flight to freedom. A founding member of the now notorious "hippie" church called The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, Ed is one of the few surviving core members of that group, the only one to come forward with brutal honesty in the telling of this story. "A wonderfully gritty story of transcendence of the physical and the spiritual. Serve time with Ed and discover hell and heaven. Unique and extraordinary." Jeremy Tarcher publisher, Tarcher Books and Seven Years in Tibet "A harrowing account of one of the most infamous hell-holes on earth, and a thrilling tale of betrayed ideals, adventure, escape and redemption." Nicholas Schou author of Kill the Messenger, Orange Sunshine, and The Weed Runners (forthcoming) "An astonishing true story that has every twist and turn you could imagine. Eddie's is a story that plunges to the bleakest depths and soars to the greatest heights. Guns, drugs, girls, South American hell-holes-it has it all...." Nick Green director of the National Geographic documentary "The Hippie Mafia" "Edward Padilla's gritty street prose takes the reader into a desperate Heart of Darkness from which not many could ever emerge. But this gripping narrative turns emergence into a transcendent awakening and genuine rebirth. This is the real stuff, no modifiers required." John Kent Harrison screenwriter/director "Eddie Padilla embodies so much of the promise and peril of post-War Southern California that it makes your head spin: a multiracial child of the New West; schooled by surfers, street fighters, and smugglers; turned on as a '60s seeker; turned out as a '70s nihilist. In Lurigancho Prison, Peru, a Dante-esque catalog of horrors, Padilla paid for California's broken dreams as much as his own. His brave escape and ongoing recovery offer a dagger of redemption and hope in the fight against 21st century cynicism and apathy." Joe Donnelly co-editor/founder Slake: Los Angeles, author of "The Pirate of Penance"