Patty Prewitt spent 38 years behind bars for a crime she did not commit before her sentence was commuted in May 2025. And yet, within those walls, she found ways to live bigger, love deeper, and shine brighter than many of us ever manage in freedom. Her letters are inspiring, humbling — and ultimately unforgettable. This book will break your heart then uplift and inspire you. The writing, like the author, is genuine and powerful. I will never forget Patty and her ability to make the best of horrific situations while helping others.
“Life with no parole for fifty years. That’s what my paperwork reads. I saw it in print the day I arrived.” So begins Patty Prewitt’s epistolary memoir, describing the first eighteen years of her incarceration in various Missouri women’s prisons. Her letters tell the nightmarish story of incarceration while also describing her daily attempts at making the best of the situation with keen observation, humor, and compassion for those around her. Patty served thirty-eight years before her sentence was commuted.
A sweeping novel about a single house in the woods of New England, told through the lives of those who inhabit it across the centuries—“a time-spanning, genre-blurring work of storytelling magic” (The Washington Post) from the Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Piano Tuner and The Winter Soldier.
“With the expansiveness and immersive feeling of two-time Booker Prize nominee David Mitchell’s fiction (Cloud Atlas), the wicked creepiness of Edgar Allan Poe, and Mason’s bone-deep knowledge of and appreciation for the natural world that’s on par with that of Thoreau, North Woods fires on all cylinders.”—San Francisco Chronicle
As someone who writes often about the grit and quiet heroism of Appalachian people in the early 20th century, I felt an immediate kinship with Emma Gatewood. Her story isn’t just about a walk—it’s about endurance, trauma, and dignity. Expertly researched.
2014 National Outdoor Book Award Winner in History / Biography
Emma Gatewood told her family she was going on a walk and left her small Ohio hometown with a change of clothes and less than two hundred dollars. The next anybody heard from her, this genteel, farm-reared, sixty-seven-year-old great-grandmother had walked 800 miles along the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail. By September 1955 she stood atop Maine’s Mount Katahdin, sang “America, the Beautiful,” and proclaimed, “I said I’ll do it, and I’ve done it.”
Driven by a painful marriage, Grandma Gatewood not only hiked the trail alone, she was the first person—man…
“Purchase a ticket for a chance to win a rosy-cheeked little one. Ladies particularly welcome.”
With precise, breathtaking prose and hints of magical realism, Ruth Talbot tells the tale of three orphans as they crisscross the country in the 1930s, riding the rails, chasing the harvests, and stealing when they must. Their destination is always the same: survival.
Teeny, Sonny Boy and Vic have been swallowed up by the desperation and devastation of the Great Depression, but the trio is buoyed by the fantastical tales Teeny weaves around campfires in hobo jungles and migrant camps, including the story of the raffle baby.
As the three navigate the ravages of poverty and prejudices, they form a family bond as strong as the forces against them. But when a solemn pact fails to protect them, their lives are forever changed. And Sonny Boy is left to tell their story, and his own.
Both heartbreaking and uplifting, The Raffle Baby examines the intersection of love, loss and resilience, and the enduring triumph of memory. This is a magical tale not soon forgotten.
