The Sentence: A Family's Prison Memoir

It's clear that Kraig suffered a great deal while her husband, Jerry, served his 20-month incarceration in a minimum-security prison for a white collar crime he unwittingly committed. Jerry was a successful Cleveland attorney with two grown children who, with his wife, led a comfortable life in wealthy Shaker Heights and who also maintained an apartment in New York. Unfortunately, Kraig doesn't engender the sympathies of readers. She comes off as whiny, impatient and entitled-after all, it's only 20 months and the Kraigs are hardly in the poorhouse. The book begins with Gene's first visit to Jerry in prison, during which she cries and gets agitated in front of the prison staff. At another point, Gene is so distraught she nearly sets her house on fire. The episodes get tiresome, and it's hard to empathize with a woman who brings her own sheets to the Holiday Inn she stays in near the prison. The most engaging parts of the book are Jerry's letters from prison; they provide an intriguing glimpse into life inside a country-club style federal prison.