The title of the book and its introduction including the brief biographies of ten women on death row are misleading; most of the book is a memoir of the author's experiences, and she has never been an inmate. She interweaves her life-story with comments from the women concerning their lives behind bars -- which, in my opinion, is not comparable. O'Shea is on the outside; she chose to become a nun, and her experiences of isolation in that environment are not equivalent to those of the women behind bars. Moreover, O'Shea spends a large portion of the book describing her inappropriate sexual relationship with one of her female students. In this she was protected by her church. I kept reading the book to see if O’Shea would be arrested; she was not. The topic of capital punishment is not addressed. Moreover, there are no coherent stories of the ten women on death row who are included since their comments are widely scattered throughout the book.

Not recommended ( )