Travelogue, literary autobiography, and journalistic exposé of the mores of capital punishment, Rue Rilke chronicles its author’s initiatory Rilke pilgrimage to France and Switzerland and-upon his return to America-his up-close involvement in death penalty politics. Immersed in the legal and human drama unfolding in Houston in the days leading up to an impending execution, the intimate linkage of love and death learned from Rilke aid him in his efforts to confront his country’s sanction of lethal violence and make spiritual sense of his torn, too often black-and-white world.