The Other Wes Moore: Epilogue Summary & Analysis

Inside Jessup Correctional Facility, Wes works as a carpenter for 53 cents a day. He gets 2 hours of free time, and is in bed with lights out at 10 pm. He converted to Islam at first so he could see Tony at Friday services, but he is now a devout believer and leader in the Muslim community in prison. His family visits, but he finds these occasions difficult. When Barack Obama is elected President, the inmates at Jessup are overjoyed; this joy subsides, however, when they once again confront the monotony of their lives behind bars. At the time Moore is writing, Wes has become a grandfather at 33, and is serving the tenth year of his life sentence.

Moore moves on to describe how the lives of other characters in the book progressed up until the point at which he is writing. Joy lives just outside Baltimore, working for a consultancy that works with charitable foundations. Nikki runs an event-planning business in Virginia and Shani graduated from Princeton and Stanford Law School, and now lives with her husband. Uncle Howard was the “co-best man” (alongside Justin) at Moore’s wedding. Justin received a scholarship to college; during his senior year, his father died and he himself was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. He recovered and is now the dean of a “prestigious high school” in Pennsylvania. Captain Hill served as an Army officer for seven years before becoming a corporate lawyer; he was a groomsman at Moore’s wedding and is still an important (if “intimidating”) mentor to Moore. Moore’s grandfather James passed away, and although Moore rushed back from Afghanistan to be with him, he was sadly too late. Moore’s grandmother Winell, now in her 80s, “watches over her family like a lioness protecting her pride.”

Meanwhile, Mary still works in medical technology while raising six children: three of Wes’s kids, her niece and nephew, and her youngest son. Aunt Nicey works in elder care; all her children have graduated from high school. Sentenced to life in prison, Tony died of kidney failure at 38. After graduating from high school, Woody spent time in and out of prison before getting a job as a truck driver. He has three children. White Boy is married and lives in Atlanta, running the printing press for a magazine. Alicia works for TSA and is raising one of her two kids with Wes. Cheryl continued to struggle with addiction and lost custody of her children. At 24, she died of injuries sustained from falling down the stairs.

Moore spent two and a half years at Oxford through the Rhodes Scholarship and graduated with a master’s degree in international relations. Back in the United States, he interned in Washington DC before taking a job on Wall Street. He then took a leave of absence and headed to Afghanistan with the Army, before being accepted into the White House Fellow program. He became a special assistant to secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and during this time married his wife, Dawn. Moore has climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and has visited Seoul, Istanbul, Havana, Egypt, Amsterdam, Venice, Berlin, Brazil, and countless other places. He also delivered a speech at the event during which Barack Obama accepted the Democratic party nomination.

Moore reflects that The Other Wes Moore was a labor of love, rigorously researched even though Moore has no journalistic training. He hopes that in writing the book, he has honored the legacy of his father, Westley, who was himself a journalist. He acknowledges that the central question in the book is over what “made the difference” between his life and Wes’s. He confesses that he doesn’t know the answer, and that it would be impossible to isolate a single factor. Moore admits that life has not always been perfect for him and that he’s made his fair share of mistakes. He argues that the most important transformation in his life was the moment when he realized he was surrounded by a community of people—his family, friends, and mentors—who were all pushing him to succeed. This encouragement taught Moore what it means to be free. He and Wes both hope that other young children feel that same sense of freedom, and argues that “it’s up to us, all of us,” to make that possible.