I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

James, a boy from Sacramento, has to relocate to Oakland after the death of his father. There he encounters a rougher community, and he and his mother face life changing financial hardships. James perseveres until he is pushed to the brink where he makes an emotionally charged decision that lands him with a murder conviction. Although guilty of taking a life, the circumstances were extraordinary and his defense was inadequate.

In another intersecting storyline, there is Allison, who grows up middle-class from the mid-West, does time as a sorority girl, and eventually becomes a teacher.

When James and Allison meet, there is a kinship between them. Together they strike up a plan to right a wrong.

San Quentin Exodus opens with Allison Anderson surveying the walls of one of California’s most infamous prisons, wondering if her escape plan will work. Allison is a private school teacher who volunteers in the evenings as a math and writing instructor at San Quentin. While she’s free to walk out of the facility anytime she wants, her escape plan is for one of the inmates with whom she has connected.

James Fields has been an inmate of the California prison system for thirty years. A close examination of his life and character reveals that he is not what the media likes to call a “hardened criminal.” When the book backs up to show us James’s early life and the events that led to his incarceration, we see a gentle, soft-spoken, almost nerdy boy struggling against difficult circumstances.

When his family moves from Sacramento to Oakland, he’s not prepared for the mean streets, the bullies, the gangs, or the poor quality inner-city school that teaches at a level below his capabilities. Though he tries to make good, he doesn’t get the support he needs. Even the school’s college counselor, ignoring James’s intellect, curiosity, and hard work ethic, encourages him to aim low. He steers his gifted student toward Hayward State, insisting that Stanford will “eat him alive.”

When one of James’s classmates is admitted to UCLA, he wonders why no one encouraged him to apply there. He feels vaguely angry, though he doesn’t know towards whom or for what reason. This tone pervades the book and the reader’s psyche. You are angry at seeing this world in which no one is looking out for each other. But who should you be angry with when poverty and injustice thwart people at every turn? For certain people, poverty and injustice are the substance of the universe they inhabit. How do you transcend the substance of the universe itself?

Sometimes, it seems hopeless. Sometimes, you simply can absorb no more. When James finally snaps, we get it. Who wouldn’t, under the circumstances he’s faced with? To simply absorb it all without ever trying to stand up for yourself would be inhuman.

Allison, we discover, is a Midwestern girl from a traditional Indiana family. She is intelligent, resourceful, and determined. Growing up, she has her own struggles. She realizes in her early teens that she is attracted to girls. She feels confused and ashamed. In her high school and college years, she is closeted and lonely. In the isolation of her suffering, she develops a deep sense of compassion for others who feel lonely and judged, those for whom society offers no pre-set path, no welcoming place.

Both characters undergo a long and somewhat painful process of growth, though James’s road through the prison system is the harder of the two. Allison comes into herself through the love and help of others. James finds his path to growth through an agonizing inner journey. When they meet in one of Allison’s evening classes at San Quentin, they recognize each other as fellow travelers.

The power of this book lies in the author’s deep compassion for both characters. The characters are so strong, this would be an excellent read even if the book had no plot. Smoot creates complex portraits of emotionally rich lives in short, clear sentences reminiscent of Hemingway. To be able to convey such richness with such simple prose requires instinct and skill. The writing style makes the book easy to read, while the story and characters make it hard to put down.

I won’t give away what happens, but I’ll say that the deeply compelling characters will stick with you. The most outstanding element of the book is the author’s compassion, and his ability to convey James’s and Allison’s lives in a way that evokes deep compassion in the reader as well. The world needs more writing like this.

San Quentin Exodus tells the story of two people whose lives intersect at San Quentin prison. One is an older Black man who is admittedly a murderer. The book gives him a lot of compassion, and it’s easy to root for him because he’s presented as the smart kid who could’ve made it—someone who overcomes a lot. But then, in a really difficult moment, his response to harassment is to shoot someone in the face, which is obviously bad.

Because of a bunch of details, there’s no leniency offered. He wiped off the gun, which erased the fingerprints of the person who had it before him, so when he later said, “I picked that gun up from someone else,” there was no evidence to support it. And the reason he killed the person was because they killed his dog—but there was no record of the dog, because nobody keeps track of “I found a stray dog,” so again there was no evidence. So the story that got sold to the jury and the judge was basically: this is just a bad kid. And it’s the late 80s, with drugs and all the politics and panic that came with that era, so everything stacks against him.

Around the time he’s going to prison, another character is born. She’s about 15 to 20 years younger than him, and she’s his opposite in almost every way. Instead of being a Black boy from Compton, she’s a white girl from the Midwest. She has a really sweet, beautiful life. The complication in her story is that she’s gay, but she doesn’t know anyone else who is. She sees friends treated badly for it, and she feels very alone in the world. So even though their lives are totally different, both of them grow up feeling isolated.

She goes to college and finds the love of her life there, which is genuinely sweet. After college, they move to California. She starts volunteering at the prison, meets him, and spends a year tutoring him and helping him write his autobiography. He’s a good writer, and they grow close and develop real respect for each other. Their meetings stop because of the pandemic, and they don’t see each other again for almost a year.
At some point she decides, “I’m going to break you out.” She’s always loved puzzles—Nancy Drew was her role model growing up—and she used to do puzzles and problem-solving with her dad. Even when she first saw the prison, she had that instinct of “I wonder how someone would break out of here.” Then she learns his story more fully and thinks, “Wow, he really shouldn’t be here.” He goes up for parole and gets denied, and she takes that as the moment where she commits to getting him out.

The pandemic hits, and she’s basically telling him to wait. He’s like, “I can’t do this,” but she insists: whatever you do, wait. So he waits. Time passes. She eventually gets access again, and they work hard on the plan. They execute it and break him out.
That’s basically the end of the story. The breakout is discovered, obviously, because he’s not there anymore, but they also cover enough loose ends that people stop looking for him. They get away with it.

My reaction is mixed. It’s a very interesting choice to build your book in 2026 around a white-savior structure. It positions her as fixing one thing, when the bigger problem is the overall system. And the book doesn’t really address the systemic issues that created this whole situation. I don’t know if I needed that from this book, but the absence stands out. In the end it feels like a cute story: someone has a terrible life, someone has a less terrible life, they meet and find kindred spirits, and the one ends up helping the other. And then, realistically, they probably can’t ever really be in each other’s lives again—because if she’s constantly meeting up with a guy who could be him, anyone still suspicious would keep an eye on her. So… I guess it’s cute.