When the Light Finds Us: From a Life Sentence to a Life Transformed

Single mother and small-business owner Judy Henderson's world fell apart when she was sentenced to life in prison for a crime she did not commit, separating her from her three-year-old son and thirteen-year-old daughter.

During three decades in the inhospitable prison system, she faced violence, mistreatment, and even live snakes and scorpions, all the while pleading her case to the legal system and passionately parenting her children from a prison phone. Never giving up hope that she would be set free, she committed to self-education and self-healing, worked with nonprofit prison programs, earned her GED then paralegal degree, participated in the passing of the first battered women's bill in MO, and shepherded women and mothers through the clemency process. With the help of the prosecutor on her case and the Missouri governor, Judy was granted clemency and received a full pardon after almost thirty-five years behind bars.

Filled with keen insights into how Judy overcame incredible obstacles, the power of faith and the "coincidences" that fortified her, When the Light Finds Us is compelling narrative nonfiction from an award-winning writer that will motivate readers to persevere through hard times and bolster their confidence in redemption, faith, and the power of a mother's love.

Judy Henderson was a young, middle-class, divorced mother of two who was busy growing her own business when her life was turned upside down. She was wrongly convicted of a crime she didn't commit and given a life sentence. Behind bars, she focused on parenting her children, obtaining her paralegal degree, and improving the rights of women. Thirty-five years later, in 2019, she was exonerated and pardoned, her sentence commuted.

Today, she savors time with her two adult children and two grandchildren while sharing her motivational, faith-filled message of overcoming obstacles in the face of adversity, serving in leadership positions with Catholic Charities, and advocating to improve the conditions and rights of incarcerated women, especially mothers and their children.

Jimmy Soni is an award-winning writer whose latest book, The Founders: The Story of PayPal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley was a debut bestseller that earned praise from the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, The New Yorker, The Economist, and many other review outlets. Described as "an intensely magnetic chronicle" (New York Times) and "engrossing," the book includes hundreds of interviews Soni conducted, including exclusive sit-downs with Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and others.

Soni's previous book, A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age, won the 2017 Neumann Prize, awarded by the British Society for the History of Mathematics, and the Middleton Prize by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a book Fortune magazine calls a "charming account of one of the twentieth century's most distinguished scientists." He is also the co-author of Jane's Carousel, completed with the late Jane Walentas, which captured one woman's remarkable twenty-five-year journey to restore a beloved carousel in Brooklyn Bridge Park. He resides in Brooklyn, New York, with his daughter, Venice. www.JimmySoni.com