This compilation is an excellent example of the wasted potential that the US has sentenced to it's prisons. Within the covers of this book you will be brought to tears one moment then horrified a few moments later. You will be shown incredible human cruelty coupled with acts of caring and kindness. I was shocked at the depth of despair that these men and women experience.

I do not mean to say that the authors of these essays and poems should all be released from the penitentiary. Many of them deserve to be there. What I am saying is that everyone should read a book like this. Especially people involved in the judicial and law enforcement communities. We should educate and give hope to the men and women in our prisons. Because, as you will read in the book, a man without hope is a man who doesn't care anymore and a man who doesn't care anymore will do anything.

Concerning a volume such as this, there is sometimes the expectation that the voices will be all too similar because the environments in which each is writing are much the same. This collection sets most of that concern aside. Each of these incarcerated voices retains an identity despite surroundings that would have it otherwise. Do they speak for all those behind bars? I doubt it. Here introspection is at work, likely the first time for many of these prisoners. It's difficult to believe that so many others, out of control, will ever achieve such a state,or even want to.

It is easy to write off what these folks have to say-- but our nation needs to hear about the injustice of our prison system

I discovered this book via the recommendation of another author, Barbara Kingsolver. She refers to it as one of the "beautifully written first novels published each year that sell a handful of copies and quietly go out of print." Although the characters in this book did not completely resonate with me, I would still encourage you to purchase an out-of-print copy of this book. Why? I personally found it intriguing that Ms. Chevigny created an entire novel based on a single quote from Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own," in which she wondered what a novel would be like if the writer had the confidence and art to do justice to the subject of friendship between women:

"'Chloe like Olivia,' I read. And then it struck me how immense a change was there. Chloe liked Olivia perhaps for the first time in literature."

The story is about a friendship between two women who take different paths in life between 1961 and 1975 but who manage to remain spiritually and emotionally close. How they do so is the essence of the story. And while I found it difficult to relate to these two women personally, I felt that Ms. Chevigny did an excellent job of capturing the ebbs and flows, the sometimes reluctance and tension and struggle to communicate over distance and time between two friends, but how, despite time and distance and different experiences, all the words and emotions can come tumbling out and the essence that binds two people together still remains, and the intensity is recreated again and again.

Read this book. It will encourage you to reflect on your own friendships and relationships and how they have grown and endured over time. I myself am eager to read more work by Ms. Chevigny.