The Deserving

What the Lives of the Condemned Reveal About American Justice

By: Elizabeth Vartkessian, Sister Helen Prejean - foreword

Narrated by: Elizabeth Vartkessian

Bloomsbury presents The Deserving, written and read by Elizabeth Vartkessian.

A groundbreaking new take on the American justice system from one of its unknown revolutionaries, offering a powerful new vision of responsibility, punishment, and repair.

"The first book I’m aware of to pull back the curtain on a life-saving field most have never heard of: mitigation." --Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking, from the foreword

Elizabeth Vartkessian works with criminal defense teams as a mitigation specialist. She isn’t part of the Innocence Project; her clients are often legally guilty, and often of terrible crimes. Rather, her job is to spend hundreds of hours per case talking to the parents, siblings, teachers, and neighbors of a defendant, situating their crimes in context.

Founder and director of nonprofit mitigation team Advancing Real Change Inc., Vartkessian weaves powerful, gripping stories from her extraordinary career into an inspiring argument for dignity in American justice. Her unique experience has taught her that when personal or generational trauma enters the body, it finds its way out eventually, sometimes through violence. She contends that we cannot hold her clients solely responsible for their actions, nor can we continue to stomach harsh penalties that deny real justice to perpetrators and victims alike.

Amid the Trump administration’s record-high executions and calls to expand the use of the death penalty after decades of progress, The Deserving is required reading for a dangerous new era of rollbacks. Vartkessian offers a compelling, hope-filled vision of true rehabilitation replacing retribution.

©2026 Elizabeth Vartkessian, Sister Helen Prejean (P)2026 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Everyone should read/listen!

I needed to know there was still humanity in the world. Inspiring. A real tear jerker. So insightful. I wish I could speak more intelligently to this book but I am so struck and moved by this narrative that it is difficult to explain how it impacted me. I am still processing it. I just believe that everyone who participates in this society needs to read/listen to this book.