Camerado, I Give You My Hand: How a Powerful Lawyer-Turned-Priest Is Changing the Lives of Men Behind Bars

For many years Dr. David T. Link helped young men and women prepare to become lawyers. After his wife died, and at a time in his life when most people retire, Dr. Link felt called to serve the Church and to aid the men that his profession normally put behind bars, ministering healing and forgiveness to murderers, thieves, and what many would call the least of society.



This is a book about the value of human life, and about the transformative power of friendship and compassion. Meeting Father Dave gives us hope that one person can make a difference and, through successive reinterpretations of his own life's purpose, he makes the case for adding our own unique gifts to help the least of these, our brothers and sisters from all walks of life.



Song of the Open Road by Walt Whitman



Camerado, I give you my hand!

I give you my love more precious than money,

I give you myself before preaching or law;

Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?

Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

Maura Poston Zagrans interviewed a wide spectrum of professionals and academics in writing this nonfiction narrative of Reverend David T. Link. To get the full story, she went behind the razor wire, where she spoke with and photographed prisoners at maximum-, medium-, and minimum-security facilities. Maura, a mother of six, is author of Miracles Every Day: The Story of One Physician's Inspiring Faith and the Healing Power of Prayer.

Reverend David T. Link became an ordained priest in 2008, at the age of seventy-one. An attorney-at-law, he is also Founding President Emeritus of the University of Notre Dame, Australia and Dean Emeritus of the University of Notre Dame Law School. He was the recipient of both the Young Federal Lawyer Award and the Secretary of the Treasury Award for exceptional service to the United States during the Kennedy Administration. Active in civil rights since the 1960s, Link co-founded the Center for the Homeless in South Bend. Married for 45 years to the late Barbara Link, Father Dave is a legal author, international lecturer, father of five, and grandfather of fourteen.

About Maura Poston Zagrans