Love Lockdown: Dating, Sex, and Marriage in America’s Prisons

Journalist Greenwood (Playing Dead) paints a colorful portrait of the world of MWIs, or couples who “met while incarcerated.” Contending that “prison relationships are sometimes a bubble of heaven against a backdrop of hell,” Greenwood profiles five couples. Jo and Benny Reed, who met on a pen-pal website, got married while Benny was serving a 10-year sentence for attempting to murder his ex-girlfriend. Sherry, a trans woman, and Damon, a bisexual man, last names withheld, communicate through the air vent between their prison cells. Before the Innocence Project helped overturn Fernando Bermudez’s wrongful conviction, he and his wife, Crystal, had three children together. Sheila Rule volunteered with her church’s prison ministry and married Joe Robinson while she was an editor at the New York Times. Greenwood also shares her own experiences with a prison pen pal who showed her “the laserlike attention that a man with a very long day and little to fill it with can lavish on a lady,” profiles organizations that support MWIs, and sketches the history of conjugal visits in the U.S. (only four states still allow them). Enriched by the author’s curiosity and empathy, and shot through with memorable details (Jo and Benny “toast[ed] each other with blue Powerade from the vending machine”), this is an intriguing look at a little-known world. (July)