Pete Earley, author of Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness, a finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize, will discuss his book during a presentation at 7 p.m. on October 17 in the Carnahan Center Theatre on Jamestown Community College’s Jamestown Campus.

The program, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by JCC’s business and social sciences division and the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).

Crazy tells two stories. The first account describes Earley’s attempts to get his college age son, Michael, help after he is diagnosed with bipolar disorder and suffers a manic attack that results in him being arrested. The book then shifts to the dreaded ninth floor of the Miami Dade Jail where Earley follows several psychotic inmates through the justice system and into the streets to document how they are treated.

Earley’s book has won awards from NAMI, Mental Health America, the Washington Psychiatric Association, and the American Psychiatric Association.

Earley serves on the board of directors of the Corporation for Supportive Housing, which finds innovative ways for states to finance housing projects to help eliminate homelessness. He also was appointed by the Chief Justice of the Virginia Supreme Court to a taskforce charged with rewriting the state’s involuntary commitment laws.

A former reporter for The Washington Post, Earley is the author of nine non-fiction books, including Family of Spies: Inside the John Walker Spy Ring, Prophet of Death: The Mormon Blood Atonement Killings, The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison, Confessions of a Spy: The Real Story of Aldrich Ames, and others. Earley’s novels include The Big Secret, Lethal Secrets, and The Apocalypse Stone.