The Enchanted by Rene Denfeld
The Enchanted isn't an easy read, but it is a quick one. It both challenges and reinforces at once the reader's ideas about the prison system.
Told from two perspectives, one an unnamed death row inmate and the other a caseworker only known as The Lady, the story revolves around the impending execution of another inmate who challenges The Lady with his own desire for death.
The narrator creates an entire world within his head and the walls of the prison that is populated by little gossiping men with hammers, night birds that dance in the dust of the yard and golden horses that run molten and violent beneath the floor of their confinement. Through the bars of this world he watches. He sees the other inmates, whose real names are never disclosed, approach their impending date with death in different ways. He sees the warden struggle to control his life within and without the walls. He sees The Lady become attached to the prison chaplain, whom he calls The Fallen Priest, often seeing and understanding more of their journey than they do.
Outside of the prison, as The Lady digs deeper and deeper into this particular case, she is confronted by the similarities to her own life. Circumstance is all that really separates her story from that of those she is hired to help.
Despite the darkness of the subject and the darkness within the characters, it manages to be magical and uplifting. The book is beautifully written, both gut-wrenching and…well, enchanting. It's a little like an adult version of a fairy tale. Not the Disney-fied version. The original Grimm's version, full of scary forests, desperation, betrayals and depraved acts of violence. The ones that don't always end happily.
As depressing as it sounds (and I thought so too before I read it) it actually is very powerful and hopeful, making it an excellent alternative to the brain candy we usually call "summer reading."