The book The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates tells the story of two black men with the same name. Both were born in Maryland. Both grew up with single mothers. Both had run-ins with the police by the time they were 11-years-old. But at this point their stories part. Drastically.

One Wes Moore became a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of John Hopkins. He eventually became a Rhodes Scholar. He went on to serve as a White House Fellow under former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and is an Afghanistan combat veteran. He also went on to write the book The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates, reflections on his life and the life of the man with whom he shares a name.

As for the other Wes Moore? He currently resides in Jessup Correctional Institute's maximum security unit. He is serving a life sentence without parole for his part in the shooting death of a Baltimore police officer.

The author—we'll call him the "good" Wes Moore—wrote the book to illustrate not the differences between his life and that of the other Wes Moore, but the similarities. In particular, he wants to show what it's like to grow up without a father in the house.

"My mother could teach me to be a good person," said the author in a USA Today interview, "but she couldn't teach me to be a good man." Moore credits family members and teachers with that—men who intervened in his life after his father died when he was only 3.

The other Wes Moore saw his father only three times in his life. It was during the third and final visit that Wes Moore's father looked up from a drunken stupor and asked, "Who are you?" The rest is tragic history.

Two men. Same name. Different life outcomes—likely because of the presence, or lack thereof, of a male figure in their lives. As Roland Warren, president of the non-profit National Fatherhood Initiative, says, "Fatherless kids have a hole in their soul in the shape of their fathers, and it leaves a wound that is not easily treated."