Carmel Valley 1960s fugitive mom Marie Walsh on Oprah and Today Show discussing her book

Marie Walsh, author of "A Tale of Two Lives: The Susan LeFevre Fugitive Story" discusses details of her Life as a fugitive with Oprah, April 7th and Today Show April 8th - FugitiveMom.com.

Sent to prison at age 19 on a minor drug offense— Susan Marie LeFevre received a 10-to-20-year sentence after she’d been promised probation—so she chose to escape the life she’d been dealt and begin a new one.

After scaling a barb-wired prison fence, she shortened her name to Marie and spent the next thirty-three years living the life she’d always planned. She married, raised three children, volunteered for charity events and played tennis and bridge with her many friends and neighbors—all the while carrying the secret of her past. Not even her husband knew who she really was.

Thirty-three years later, her life came crashing down as agents arrived at her home in California and transported her back to prison to finish the sentence and face additional time for her escape.

In the prison Susan/Marie continued to proclaim her innocence while being subjected to harassing and sometimes life-threatening conditions. Her tenacity and unwavering belief that the truth would set her free, make this book impossible to put down. Walsh is an articulate, intelligent advocate of prison reform and provides anecdotes not only from her own story, but that of other women who have also become helpless pawns in the so-called ‘war on drugs’.

It is a story that begins in the fractious, idealistic 70s, delves into the world of drugs, touches on church scandal, race relations and a corrupt judicial system. Readers will experience the headiness of that all-consuming first love, the humiliation of squatting naked in a jail cell, the friendships—and enmities—forged by necessity among prison women. And finally, readers will understand the price one pays in trying to escape the past and the lessons to be learned by confronting it.

Her book, set to be released on April 7, 2011 can be ordered at fugitivemom.com. For a photo of Marie with Oprah call Harpo Studios at (312) 633-1182.

"The true story of an ordinary wife and mother, whose past as a sought after fugitive from a Michigan state prison some 32 years before came into collision with the life she had built.  As Marie Walsh, she was a respected member of her community.  As Susan LeFevre, she was an accused drug kingpin that disappeared from a twenty year sentence one cold January morning.Told by the woman who lived two lives, one she desperately wanted to keep and another that remained as a specter for over three decades, this story reveals her decent into drug usage, escape from the Detroit House of Corrections, hidden life hoping for redemption and long fight to reclaim her life with her family, as friends and strangers from across the country came to support her freedom with one simple mantra - "Free Susan LeFevre".During this time, Marie Walsh vowed to tell the harrowing story of what she and thousands of other women experience each year through the American judicial and incarceration system and reveal the many who are ordinary human beings caught up in an industry of which few are aware."