The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner

On just about every best-of-the-year list in 2018, The Mars Room still never quite got the attention it deserves. Romy—a woman who is serving a life sentence for murder in an all-women’s jail in the Central Valley—tells with total honesty, surprising humor and gritty reality, the fate of women who have never gotten a fair shake in life. Incarceration, abuse, and justice are just a small sample of the important issues addressed in this novel, but it is Romy’s voice and her tenderness that leave you breathless as you witness her plight.                            —Casey