**“A compelling, heart-wrenching story” of three generations of women and the dark secret that upends their lives—from the author of The Last Suppers (**The Durango Herald).On a hot, humid July morning, sixteen-year-old Cissy Pickering calmly and deliberately shoots her father in the back.To their Mississippi community, the death of well-regarded attorney Richard Pickering is a fascinating scandal. To Cissy’s distraught mother, Caroline, i...

To their Mississippi community, the death of well-regarded attorney Richard Pickering is a fascinating scandal. To Cissy's distraught mother, Caroline, it's an unforgivable crime. But in Cissy's troubled mind, killing her father was the only way she knew to save the two people she loves most in the world. For years, Cissy has endured a devil’s bargain with her father, hoping that he would leave her younger sisters alone if she kept his abuse to herself. When that thin trust shattered, she ...

In this “raw and heartbreaking” novel set in 1950s Louisiana, a compassionate prison cook uncovers the lives of death row prisoners (Historical Novel Review).Ginny Polk has come back to Louisiana’s Greenmount State Penitentiary, the place where her father worked and died, to become a prison cook. She knows the harsh reality of life within those walls. That’s why, among her duties, Ginny has taken on a special responsibility: preparing last meals for prison...

Set in 1950s Louisiana, Mandy Mikulencak’s beautifully written and emotionally moving novel evokes both The Help and Dead Man Walking with the story of an unforgettable woman whose quest to provide meals for death row prisoners leads her into the secrets of her own past.Many children have grown up in the shadow of Louisiana’s Greenmount State Penitentiary. Most of them—sons and daughters of corrections officers and staff—left the place as soon as they could. Yet G...