The Graybar Hotel
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
The Graybar Hotel offers a glimpse into the reality of prison life through the eyes of the people who spend their days and years behind bars.
A man sits collect-calling strangers every day just to hear the sounds of the outside world; an inmate recalls his descent into addiction as his prison softball team gears up for an annual tournament; a prisoner is released and finds freedom more complex and baffling than he expected.
In this stunning debut story collection, Curtis Dawkins, who is currently serving a life sentence without parole, gives voice to the experience of some of the most isolated members of our society.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set mostly in jails and prisons the author is himself serving a sentence of life without parole the 14 stories in this debut collection give a fascinating human dimension to the lives of prisoners and the world that they inhabit. In "A Human Number," the convict narrator discovers that his random phone calls from jail reach outsiders who are as desperate as he is to communicate with another person. The narrator of "573543" ponders the fate foreordained for prisoners who inherit their identifying numbers from previously deceased inmates. "In the Dayroom with Stinky" sets the tone for its portrait of an eccentric prisoner with the narrator's bracingly honest admission, "Most of my friends have killed someone." Dawkins's tales impress with the authenticity of real-life experience, and his prose is rich in metaphor and imagery as when he describes one prisoner's arraignment as "his courtroom wedding to the state of Michigan, till death do you part," and how the fogged-up windows of a prison transport van "effectively erased us" from the outside world. His often wryly amusing observations about the routines of prison life make him a striking guide for navigating the terrain.
