• Winner of the 2001 AWP/Thomas Dunne Books Award for the Novel • Winner of the 2002 Violet Crown Book Award from the Texas Writers’ League • Finalist for the 2002 PEN West Award for Fiction • Finalist for The Great Lakes Colleges Association 2002 New Writers Award Doc Kane is sixteen years into a twenty-year murder sentence. Days away from a parole hearing, he means to get out and start a new life as a Square John—a law-abiding citizen. But within the predatory confines of Tyburn Penitentiary—Disneyland, as the inmates call it—he has debts to pay. To start, Doc has his duties as a “heavy” in the D.C. Blacks, a gang that has protected him. Then there is his new cellmate, a young dealer doing life without parole whose ignorance of prison’s code threatens them both. Finally, there are the guards: Sergeant Grippe, who is bent on “rehabilitating” Doc, and Raven, whose intentions are veiled but no less menacing. Beyond these dangers, Doc faces a deeper dilemma, one embodied by Dead Earl, a thumbless junkie and reminder of a past Doc would deny. The experience of sixteen years surviving in a violent prison has shaped Doc as profoundly as a river does its course. And if character is fate, Doc’s chances for a life on the straight and narrow are slim, unless he can reshape himself. This, he discovers, is the real struggle. If he’s to have any hope for his future, he must first confront his past. (from the hardcover jacket copy)

Vividly authentic… expertly realized. —Publisher’s Weekly A steamroller of a first novel … Parsons’ depiction of life inside the prison is as frightening as it is compelling … Doc is as complex a character as you’re likely to find in fiction —Bookreporter.com Rigorous and inspired attention … skillful and often eerie … sharp and often funny dialogue. —The New York Times Book Review An excellent attempt to portray criminality with the kind of sympathy and understanding Steinbeck brought to indigence. (Starred review) —Kirkus Reviews Riveting storytelling. —Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review