Linda Jordan emerged in the 1990s as an advocate who believed that people like her, those who lived day by day with the AIDS pandemic, were under-represented in the nation’s public health prevention campaigns. This book takes the reader down the path taken by Linda, a second-generation welfare recipient and recovering heroin addict, over five harrowing decades in Hartford, Conn., one of America’s poorest cities.

Based on 12 years of interviews by award-winning reporter Tina A. Brown, the book is a riveting narrative of Linda’s colorful yet troubled life. This work of creative non-fiction is written with the immediacy of a novel, weaving together stories told by Linda and her family; the author’s observations; and family records provided by the Connecticut Department of Children’s and Families.

Crooked Road Straight puts a human face to the statistics of a community that continues to cope with the AIDS virus in secrecy. African-American women like Linda accounted for 67 percent of the estimated AIDS cases in 2004, but only 13 percent of the female population in the U.S., according to The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

Linda’s recovery began in 1989 after she threatened suicide on the steps of the Blue Hills Treatment Center in Hartford. She was homeless, HIV positive and had lost custody of her three youngest daughters to foster care.

Treatment and counseling forced Linda to confront her faded memories of being sexually assaulted as a toddler; raped at age 10 by her childhood boyfriend, Alvin; and mainlining heroin at age 18. She committed to changing her life at a time when the welfare system in Connecticut, a financial crutch for much of her life, was drying up.

Rather than be defeated, Linda found God and reversed the course of her life. She recovered from her addiction, regained custody of her children and lived for 21 years without medication.

In 1994, Linda was one of the first African-American women in the U.S. to pose for AIDS prevention posters with her husband and children. Nearly 20,000AIDS prevention posters and billboards produced by the Concerned Citizens for Humanity, a non-profit organization in Hartford, continue to circulate around the globe.

Aspects of Linda Jordan’s life story were told in 1996 in a newspaper account by Tina A. Brown in The Hartford Courant, and a decade later when Linda died. Her photographs were featured in Life Magazine, and she was recognized as a speaker at the 1994 International AIDS Convention in Yokohama, Japan.

Linda overcame unbearable trials to become a pioneering force in the AIDS community. She closed her eyes for the last time about sunrise on May 1, 2006, surrounded by her children and grandchildren.