BOOK ON THE WAY
BOOK ON THE WAY
Samuel Gilbert is not a typical author. He never graduated high school. He never took a creative writing class. He spent decades running from the law, not chasing book deals.
But somewhere between the pulpit and the prison cell, between the stolen cars and the stolen prayers, Samuel discovered something most writers never find: a voice that refuses to lie.
He writes for the forgotten. The failed. The ones who’ve been counted out. He writes because staying silent would have killed him.
Samuel Gilbert was born in Key West, Florida, in 1941, the youngest of six children born to traveling gospel ministers.
By age four, he was preaching on stages alongside the biggest names in gospel music: Mahalia Jackson, Alex Bradford, the Roberta Martin Singers, Clara Ward, James Cleveland, and the Five Blind Boys of Alabama.
The Gilbert Gospel Preachers and Singers were respected as one of the finest family groups in the nation. Young Samuel was called the “Boy Wonder”, a child preacher with a gift that drew crowds.
But when the group disbanded, everything changed.
At twelve years old, Samuel moved to Brownsville, Brooklyn, one of the toughest, most violent neighborhoods in New York City.
The boy who had once preached about heaven now had to fight for his life on earth. He joined the Roman Lords, one of the deadliest gangs in NYC, and rose to the rank of War Counselor.
On the streets, they called him “Kato” because he used his hands and feet to fight. In the churches, they still called him “Preacher.”
By day, Samuel ran the streets, selling drugs, robbing banks, carrying his snub-nose .38 police special. By night, he still preached in churches, trying to save souls while his own was slipping away.
His family didn’t know. His congregation didn’t know. Only the gun knew.
“There were times when I would hold a gun in one hand and the Bible in the other. So when people saw me, they really didn’t know how to approach me that day.”
The pressure of living two lives eventually broke him. He abandoned his family’s faith, turned fully to the streets, and spent decades as a fugitive, a drug dealer, and an armed robber.
He was incarcerated. He lost friends to bullets, betrayal, and the system. And somewhere along the way, he lost himself.
Samuel doesn’t romanticize his past. He calls it what it was: desperation.
“At nineteen, I was broke, abandoned by much of my family, and desperate. I made a choice that would define the next chapter of my life: I picked up a gun.”
He robbed banks, department stores, and anyone who got in his way. He sold drugs to survive. He spent years as a fugitive, hiding from the police, sleeping in abandoned buildings, carrying thousands of dollars in cash because he couldn’t trust anyone.
He was arrested. He went to prison. He kept running.
“I became so paranoid I would hide thousands of dollars in different abandoned buildings in fear the police might search my home and find money I couldn’t account for.”
In 2002, Samuel was indicted on drug charges that carried twenty years in prison.
He called his pastor, Bishop Hannibal Gilbert. He prayed. And then something happened that he still can’t fully explain.
The case was dismissed. All charges dropped.
Not long after, Samuel heard a voice, internal, undeniable, urgent:
“Get up and write about where I’ve brought you from.”
Samuel protested. He had no high school diploma. No writing credentials. No reason to believe anyone would listen.
But he wrote anyway.
“I’m just an ordinary man. Why are you confiding with me now, especially after thousands of years of waiting for the truth to be exposed?”
The result was The Minister Who Turned Gangster, his first published book. It was raw, unpolished, and unflinching. Critics didn’t know what to do with it. Readers couldn’t put it down.
Samuel has since published three more books, with more on the way:
Title | Genre |
The Minister Who Turned Gangster! | Memoir |
A Chance to Learn | Essay / Testimony |
That Beasty Frame | Crime / Supernatural Thriller |
Shenoi: The Angel of Knowledge | Spiritual Allegory |
Each book is different. But every one of them carries the same DNA: honesty without apology.
“I don’t write to impress critics. I write because if I don’t, the questions eat me alive.”
Today, Samuel Gilbert is 82 years old.
He lives quietly but writes loudly. He has children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren — including his daughter Sylva, who appears in his books and remains one of his biggest supporters.
He still carries the scars of his past. But he doesn’t hide them. He writes them.
“I’ve been a lot of things in this life. A liar isn’t one of them.”
