Toussaint is the killer.' So begins the saga of Paige Pate, the sole young African American Hearing Officer working in the Michgian Department of Corrections. Written in diary fashion, the book chronicles one woman's journey through the perils of prison life. In a position analogus to 'Judging Amy' for the prison sector, Paige learns things about human nature that she has never known existed. This is a frightening microcosm of every day life gone mad. By turns edgy, profane, funny or reeking with despair, the prisoners and officers spring to life in a modern Canterbury Tales of locked in the shackles, and behind the bars of every day prison life