A former prison guard and talented fiddler returns to his Montana hometown to bury his wife and confront the inmate who, twenty years ago, held him hostage during a prison riot.

"Follows the story of nine ... New Hampshire correctional officers over the course of one year on the job. While veteran guards get by on what they consider survival strategies--including sadistic power-mongering and obsessive voyeurism--two rookies, including the only female officer on her shift, develop their own tactics for facing 'the system'"--Publisher marketing.

Thirty-one-year-old Natalie Price has a tough job. A superintendent in the Massachussetts prison system, she rules over inmates' lives just before they get released. She's had to fight hard to be taken seriously in this harsh world, a world that is mostly male-on both sides of the bars. But she believes in what she's doing, and she's good at it. Now, however, she gets the biggest challenge of her six-year career when a good friend, a college professor...

Natalie Price, who first appeared in Elise Title's acclaimed Killing Time, runs Horizon House, a halfway house for about-to-be-released convicts in the Massachusetts prison system. A young woman in a man's world, Nat is constantly under the gun, sometimes literally, to keep things running safely for inmates and employees. The latest inmate to enter Horizon House is Lynn Ingram, a transsexual who was convicted of manslaughter but, always claimed self-defense....