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WITH LOVE FROM THE INSIDE is not really a murder mystery, because what happened and to whom are recorded, both in court documents, and in the mind of a convicted murderer's daughter. Instead, in alternating chapters, we inhabit the minds of a convicted murderer on death row as her last appeals go forward, and the tormented mind of her daughter, who, in shame, has hidden her parentage from her husband and invented an entirely different past instead.
Dramatis personae: Grace Bradshaw, an astonishingly loving person who has been incarcerated and awaiting execution for the murder of her infant son for seventeen years; Sophie Bradshaw Logan, her daughter who barely keeps her past hidden; Roni, a prisoner who makes trouble on Death Row by screaming and lying; Jada, a psychologically damaged prisoner who murdered her stepfather because he abused her; Ben Taylor, a young, hardworking attorney who believes in Grace's innocence; Thomas Logan, M.D., Sophie's (almost obligatory) clueless, wealthy, and handsome husband; Mindy Parker, Sophie's gal pal extraordinaire; Paul Logan, Grace's husband, a pastor (now gone) who believed in his wife's innocence; various prison guards, doctors' wives, state officials.
With LOVE FROM THE INSIDE is told in alternating chapters in Grace's first-person narrative "from the inside" and Sophie's limited omniscient narration as the wife of a surgeon. It is Grace's voice that compels one to keep reading. Despite the odds against it, she has learned forgiveness for her accusers, and kindness towards her fellow inmates, no matter what they may have done in the past. For those of us who are fortunate enough to breathe free air, Grace and her fellow inmates Roni and Jada teach us that our good lives and our freedom can be taken away. They teach us what it is like to live in narrow quarters, undergo strip searches, find one's privileges taken away, and discover that politicians' ideas can radically shorten one's life. Despite the daily routine of the prison, Grace's narrative is given focus by her impending execution date.
Sophie is less well-written. Pisel has given her wealth and privilege. She attends ladies' meetings and organizes charitable events, all the while managing to hide a childhood that had no privilege and which ended in two terrible losses, that of her infant brother, to sudden death, and that of her mother, to imprisonment. Sophie's husband seems to have come from a movie script (I almost said, Dr. Kildaire, but that would have given away my age, wouldn't it have?); it is difficult to believe that someone who cares for patients for a living fails to note that something is wrong with his wife.
To spice the plot, Grace's faithful and giving lawyer feels that his client has been falsely accused. He sets about looking for evidence that will exonerate her. And, doggedly, he looks for Sophie, who has determinedly buried her past, moved to another place, and dropped all contacts with friends from her "previous" life. The lawyer, Ben, is working against an execution date that grows closer each day, and against a conservative governor who has taken a tough-on-crime stance.
In addition, the father of another inmate, long estranged, tries to make contact with his imprisoned daughter, Roni. She cannot read her father's letters, her father's age and income mitigate against his contact with Roni. As the novel draws to its close, against the odds, the father inches closer and closer to seeing his imprisoned daughter. Against the odds, Sophie's secrets begin to spill out into the open.
WITH LOVE FROM THE INSIDE is compelling because Grace's voice is compelling, and because we now know that our justice system is imperfect. Graces lie incarcerated or even legally murdered in our land of the free. This novel is that story.
§ Cathy Downs is professor of English at Texas A&M University-Kingsville in Kingsville, Texas.
Reviewed by Cathy Downs, July 2016
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