Bookin' in the Big House

Name: Bookin' in the Big House
Price: 48.97 AUD
Availability: OutOfStock
ISBN: 9781588385673

What I Learned Leading a Women’s Prison Book Club

Pat Cunningham Devoto

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Paperback

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English

NewSouth Books
15 March 2026

Gender studies: women; Penology & punishment

Pat Cunningham Devoto had specific hopes for the women imprisoned at the Montgomery Women’s Facility who participated in her book club for the better part of seven years. She hoped the books they read would give some respite from their daily prison life and, at the same time, hoped the individual members might gain valuable knowledge that would have a positive impact on their future. Doesn’t that sound lovely?

Instead, Devoto learned how to “brew” a batch of beer—right under the guards’ noses; how to assume a stone-faced expression while a guard berated her because she brought books—to the book club; what it’s like to have a wedding, complete with trimmings, while imprisoned; how to anonymously pester the parole board from the prison phones; how to make hand sanitizer punch; and how to use PREA cards in the exact opposite way they are meant to be used. In other words, the best way for a self-proclaimed naïve, middle-class, law-abiding novice like Devoto to learn how to be a crook was to go to prison. But in the beginning, of course, she hadn’t a clue. While most of her teachers are now gone, in one way or another, Bookin’ in the Big House is Pat’s remembrance of them and of the place they lived.

By: Pat Cunningham Devoto
Imprint: NewSouth Books
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 140mm,
ISBN: 9781588385673
ISBN 10: 1588385671
Pages: 190
Publication Date: 15 March 2026
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

PAT CUNNINGHAM DEVOTO is a one-time high school history teacher and a member of the USTA Southern Tennis Hall of Fame. Pat is the author of five novels, including My Last Days as Roy Rogers, Out of the Night That Covers Me, and The Summer We Got Saved. She lives and writes in both the Atlanta Metro and Alabama.

Reviews for Bookin' in the Big House: What I Learned Leading a Women’s Prison Book Club

""[Devoto's} persistence, and her insistence on viewing club members as more than the worst thing they’d ever done, offers inspiration as well as a quiet critique of the U.S. carceral system. Readers will be moved."" * Publishers Weekly *