Distorted

Alabaster Penitentiary is where inmates go when the world believes they are dead. The narrator is a bank robber, and insists the place is wrong for her: she sees herself as small-time next to the psychopaths and killers locked up around her. Her first aim is to get through each day unharmed.

The guards run the prison, and they are more dangerous than the prisoners. One of them, a man she can only think of as Officer, takes a particular interest in her. Their dynamic is built on fear, lust and cruelty, and the prison setting is dark and menacing.

The story is told in the first person by the prisoner. As the weeks pass, the line between what she dreads and what she wants begins to blur. The man who frightens her turns into something she craves, and she knows it is an addiction.

Inside the dungeon, reality warps. The question the book turns on is which confinement is worse for her: the cell that holds her body, or the grip this guard takes on her mind.