First published 2018
Romy Hall walks into Stanville Women's Correctional Facility in 2003 to serve two consecutive life sentences. The prison sits in California's Central Valley, far from everything she once knew. San Francisco feels like another lifetime now. Her young son Jackson exists in a world she can no longer reach. Inside Stanville, thousands of women fight for basic necessities. Guards and inmates perform their daily theater of power and submission. Violence erupts without warning. The prison operates by its own absurd logic, creating situations both brutal and darkly comic. Romy must learn to navigate this closed system where survival depends on understanding unspoken rules. She discovers how institutional life strips away the familiar while demanding new forms of adaptation. The concrete walls separate her from her past, but memories of her former life persist. Kushner captures the grinding reality of incarceration through Romy's eyes, revealing how prison changes everyone it touches.
Genres: fiction, american-fiction, crime, contemporary, 21st-century
Vibes: dark, emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, institutional-life
Setting: California, Central Valley, San Francisco, Stanville Women's Correctional Facility
Period: 2003
338 pages · Hardcover · Scribner
Content warnings: abuse, violence