As an actor, activist, social services professional, and writer, Paul Susi is entangled in stories. Some are Shakespearean tragedies of lust and murder, others are about the many thousands of vulnerable people he’s helped in his work in transitional housing and shelters over the past two decades. One story in particular—that of a Chinese immigrant who was wrongfully convicted of murder and sentenced to death in the late 1880s—helped spur Susi’s first book, Character Work.