NoSauce

NoSauce Book Review - Orange Is The New Back: My Year in a Women’s Prison by Piper Kerman

I love a good memoir.

This one about going to prison, and describing the entire process from the Fed’s showing up at your house 10 years after you crime was committed, to trying to get through every day in that hellish world, to release, was simply put: spellbinding.

Piper Kerman is every girl. She made a few mistakes, but she didn’t harm anyone, or do anything awful like rape or murder. She simply dated a drug lord, and happened to 1 time carry a suitcase of cash for her across international boundaries not even really knowing what was going on. But the canary sang - and she was sentenced to 13 months in a minimum security prison 10 years later. 

She describes prison in vivid orange and khaki detail. The food, the living quarters, the prison employees and the absent warden, but mostly the other women there. These woman that loved, hated, but never ignored our protagonist.

Prison and jail are two very different things. Going to prison with basically all your human rights taken away would terrify even the strongest of women, and to hear a first hand account was fascinating.

I was so engrossed in this book, I sped through it. 

Completely and totally absorbing. 

4 out of 5 stars.