An unforgettable and unpredictable debut novel of guilt, punishment, and the stories we tell ourselves to survive
Noa P. Singleton never spoke a word in her own defense throughout a brief trial that ended with a jury finding her guilty of first-degree murder. Ten years later, having accepted her fate, she sits on death row in a maximum-security penitentiary, just six months away from her … months away from her execution date.
Meanwhile, Marlene Dixon, a high-powered Philadelphia attorney who is also the mother of the woman Noa was imprisoned for killing. She claims to have changed her mind about the death penalty and will do everything in her considerable power to convince the governor to commute Noa’s sentence to life in prison, in return for the one thing Noa can trade: her story. Marlene desperately wants to understand the events that led to her daughter’s death — events that only Noa knows of and has never shared. Inextricably linked by murder but with very different goals, Noa and Marlene wrestle with the sentences life itself can impose while they confront the best and worst of what makes us human.
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We all had mixed feelings about this book, and I will try to include them all in this review. When we are first introduced to Noa, she comes across as a rude, obnoxious woman, which personally I didn’t like. But as you read through the story, you realize that she has been incarcerated for over ten years and sitting on death row. Unstandbly, she …
This book was fantastic. Not only was it well written, but it was engaging and so very real. I knew people like Noa. Smart, kind but utterly lost and lazy. The ‘once knocked down, why get up again, I’ll just crawl through life’ mentality. However, in each person I have known like this, I would choose them over the Marlene’s of life. Her arrogant …