Ira Einhorn’s Prelude to Intimacy is the activist and dynamic thinker’s account of his life underground from the time he fled the United States in 1981 until he met his wife in 1987, written from his prison cell in Gradinan, just north of Bordeaux, in just 18 days. This book is full of the immediacy of his feeling that he would shortly be returned to the United States. Publication of the work, on September 23, 2005 coincides with Einhorn’s appeal of his conviction for the 1977 murder of Holly Maddux. While reflecting upon his role in the consciousness movement in the 1960s and 70s, Einhorn has many observations about the direction American and European cultures have taken since the sixties. He writes: “Consider this: 90% of American families are described as being dysfunctional; over 50% of marriages fail; the incidence and prevalence of stress-related illnesses are growing exponentially; job security is a dream of the past; sexuality, one of the major forms of release available to contemporary city-dwellers, who are cut off from trees, grass, and bird-song, is now fraught with peril and ringed round with the odor of death; child abuse is endemic; pedophilia is on the rampage; destructive substances are available anywhere and everywhere there is money to pay for them; teenage crime is a growth industry (think on the sad case of Malcolm X’s grandson), and perhaps worst of all, teenage suicide, a devastating response to this spreading illness of infinite consumption, grows by leaps and bounds. A long list that adds up to total fragmentation and a continually increasing stress on every one of us no matter how rich we may be and how protected we feel. That is the problem that clearly links my struggles to the common experience, extreme though my situation may seem.” Adding to the mix, Prelude… also includes a marvelously sensuous account of the many women he loved in Ireland and Formentera while on the run. In a letter to readers, Einhorn emphatically states, “I did NOT kill Holly Maddux,” and in the Epilogue he presents a compelling case that he’s telling the truth. Though Maddux’s body was “found” in a trunk in Einhorn’s closet, there was no blood in the body or the trunk, and no traces of blood whatsoever could be found in his apartment, despite the fact that she was allegedly bludgeoned there. There were no witnesses to the murder, nor of him transporting the body, nor any real proof that Einhorn killed the woman he loved. All the evidence, weak as it was, was circumstantial. Statements that Holly had been seen after she was supposed to have been killed were suppressed. Usually, if the evidence does not fit, the jury must acquit. Yet despite glaring holes in the government’s case, Einhorn is serving a life sentence. Einhorn's friend from the 60s and Prelude…editor and annotator, James Sorrells, Ph.D., writes: "Ira told his many friends in the 1960s that some day he might be framed for something and/or killed because he knew too much about the intrigues of the CIA, FBI, and Defense Department.”