Passage Rites

It is January 1978 when Michael Crabtree leaves his hometown of Virginia Beach, Virginia, with a backpack, one hundred dollars, a notebook of poems, a guitar case, and his lost dreams. Having recently lost his athletic scholarship at North Carolina State University due to a football injury, Michael decides to hitchhike to Houston, Texas, to seek work in the oilfields.

In his memoir Passage Rites: Adversity’s Challenge, Michael chronicles how, halfway through his first year in Houston, he decides to return home to continue his college education. But everything changes the morning of December 30, 1978, when two Virginia Beach policemen knock on his parents’ door and place him under arrest for armed robbery-a crime he never committed. As Michael is thrown into a jail cell to await his fate, he rings in 1979 with his fellow prisoners and quietly wonders what will become of his life. As he returns to Texas to face his accusers, Michael soon realizes that his journey to the truth will not be easy. This is the inspiring true story of a young man who, when he was faced with an unjust incarceration, adversity, and the theft of his innocence, never gave up.