Based in Marin County, California, THE PARADOX OF INNOCENCE is a true-life novel of two men on the same path, but with strikingly different values. Joe Sergente (antagonist), following Machiavellian principles believed, among other things, that empathy was weakness. John Paul Chase (protagonist), orphaned at age ten, attached himself to Sergente, whom he viewed as a strong father figure. Sergente entangled Chase in a murder.
With no way out, Chase became associated with Baby Face Nelson, John Dillinger, and other gangsters. He was the unknown member of the Dillinger-Nelson gang, useful for his ability to walk into any store and not be recognized. He committed four banks robberies with Baby Face Nelson, two with John Dillinger and one with Pretty Boy Floyd. After Baby Face Nelson’s death, the result of seventeen gunshot wounds, his widow was arrested and tortured by FBI agents until she identified Chase as the unknown member of the gang. At that point, J. Edgar Hoover took a personal interest in John Paul Chase.
For book club discussion, or a deeper reading experience, consider the following:
1) The novel begins at Hutchinson’s Quarry where large chunks of rock are blasted from the hillside, crushed into uniform sizes, sorted, and then slid down chutes to awaiting barges for transport to far off places. Ultimately, the rock is flattened into roadbed for railroads. Does this symbolism have an application in the human experience?
2) Discuss the morality of prostitution in three different settings: Hutchinson’s Quarry, the Chinatown slave dens, and the San Francisco tenderloin.
3) During the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, San Franciscans living on hillsides loaded their possessions into suitcases and tried to outrun the flames – many hung on too long and perished. Picture yourself in their situation, dragging all you had worked for, heirlooms, and treasures, smoke watering your eyes, intense heat, screaming, and no idea as to the extent of the fire, or its outcome. At what point do you let go of your material possessions and flee?
4) Discuss the similarities between the San Francisco garbage wars and the China Town Tong wars a short distance away.
5) Discuss whether, or not, the choices of John Paul’s father led to J.P.’s criminality.
6) It has been said that, “If you shake hands with the devil, you will spend the rest of your life trying to get your hand back.” At what point did John Paul Chase shake hands with the devil?
7) Reflect on the morality of the E.A. Tamm memo and “serving the greater good.”
8) Consider the significance of the subject matter in the sketch Chase gave the Alcatraz chaplain, and whether, or not, the “unfinished” picture was actually finished.
9) Discuss the use, or misuse, of religion on the protagonist (Chase) and the antagonist (Sergente).
10) Are there similarities in your life that relate to Chase’s reflections, from Alcatraz, on the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge?
11) On the launch ride back from Alcatraz, Thomas McDade, a hardened lawyer and FBI agent, deliberated on the taking of a human life. The most troubling was that during war, the soldiers on both ends of the bayonet were basically identical; neither wanted to be there, both had families they loved and that loved them, and most carried pictures of a loved one in their pocket.
Assuming this is correct, and there is an identical you at both ends of the bayonet, could you kill yourself simply because you wore another uniform? Would the question be any easier to answer if you thought and spoke in a foreign language, or had a different religion, or skin color?
12) What inner truths about himself are revealed in Chase’s paintings (namely, his picture to the chaplain, the San Francisco skyline, and the painting for Samuel Rosenblatt)? At times in your life, have these truths ever applied to you?
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