Women On the Row: Revelations From Both Sides of the Bars

While researching her book on women and the death penalty, Kathleen O'Shea made a systematic attempt to contact every woman in the U.S. on death row. At first, she got nowhere, but eventually she began to correspond with two or three women, who in turn told their friends about her work, and how O'Shea, unlike most reporters, was willing to let them tell their own stories. Soon O'Shea was receiving a dozen or so letters a week from women on death row, and supplying many with stamps and envelopes. The result is a slim but shattering volume of reflections by women, some but not all of whom claim to be innocent, describing their lives before and since being placed on death row. Their memories are movingly juxtaposed with the author's astonishing life story. As a young woman, O'Shea, a nun and social worker, began an ill-advised consensual romance with an underage female student, whose mother ensured not only that O'Shea was fired and driven out of town, but that she was removed from almost every job that she subsequently sought. While the age of the student made their love a crime, the persecution O'Shea experienced, make her well able to understand the lives of death row inmates, and to affirm that, in the words of Sister Helen Prejean, we are better than our worst mistake. --Regina Marler