Running the books: the adventures of an accidental prison librarian, by Avi Steinberg

Having fallen away, far, far away, from his roots as an Orthodox Jew and over-achieving Yeshiva scholar, Avi Steinberg finds himself at loose ends after finishing Harvard. He answers an ad for an opening for a librarian in a prison and soon is checking out books and answering questions from the male and female inmates (separately, of course) of a tough Boston prison. Some of the stories he tells are funny; some frightening; and many sad. There's the inmate who longs to have his own TV cooking show someday, tentatively called "Thug Sizzle;" the woman who joins his creative writing class primarily so she can sit by a window that looks down on the prison yard where her son, who she gave up as a very young child, is exercising, having become an inmate as well; and the stories told by the "kites," scribbled notes concealed in books for other inmates to find. Although the book is a bit self-involved, the tales of the inmates are well done and affecting and his meditations on prisons are thoughtful. 399 pp.