The Other Wes Moore: One Name,Two Fates - Wes Moore

     “One of us is free and has experienced things that he never even knew to dream about as a kid. The other will spend every day until his death behind bars for an armed robbery that left a police officer and father of five dead. The chilling truth is that his story could have been mine. The tragedy is that my story could have been his.”

As shown in the above quote, Baltimore’s two Wes Moores, roughly the same age, ended up in very different places. But it didn’t have to be that way. In The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates, one of the two men tells exactly how, and maybe why, it happened the way it did for them. The book is divided into eight chapters and three sections. The three sections, representing distinct periods in the lives of the two men, are titled: “Fathers and Angels,” “Choices and Second Chances,” and “Paths Taken and Expectations.” Each section is introduced by a conversation between Wes and Wes in the prison’s visiting room, with the chapters within the sections representing the eight pivotal years in their lives.

            “…for those of us who live in the most precarious places in this country, our destinies can be determined by a single stumble down the wrong path, or a tentative step down the right one.

Both Wes Moores grew up in fatherless homes. The difference, though, is that one Wes lost his father to a tragically misdiagnosed illness and the other never really knew the man who abandoned him before his birth. And, both little boys were blessed with strong mothers who wanted better lives for themselves and their children. But again, there was one difference. In the author’s case, his mother never lost her determination to keep her children safe from the drug culture that surrounded them. She even went so far as to move her family from Baltimore to New York so that her own parents could help her raise her children in a “better” environment (as questionable as their new neighborhood actually turned out to be). The other Wes didn’t get that level of attention and help from his own mother for as long, and when he did become intimately involved with the Baltimore drug world, she only went through the motions of trying to stop him. As it turned out, she had her own addictions to deal with.

It is not surprising that both Moore boys, one by now in New York, the other still in Baltimore, would eventually find themselves at the same crossroad in life. Both were tempted by the big money that could be earned on the streets. One succumbed to the temptation. The other was sent to military school. And their lives would never again have much in common.

Wes Moore

Even now, author Wes Moore is reluctant to say conclusively what he believes made the critical difference in the life-paths chosen by him and the other Wes Moore. He says, “The answer is elusive. People are so wildly different, and it’s hard to know when genetics or environment or just bad luck is decisive.” If I had to guess myself, I would say that the difference-maker in the author’s life was his mother, a fighter of a woman determined that her children would not fall victim to the environment they were forced to live in. Somehow, with the help of her own parents, she was able to find the money to place her children in private schools (especially the military school that eventually put Wes on full scholarship) to somewhat shelter them from the influence of their peers on the street. The other West Moore was not so lucky.

Bottom Line: The Other Wes Moore is a sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes inspirational, account of two very different lives, what those lives had in common, what was different about them, and how they eventually intertwined.