Kathleen Karr
Hyperion / 2003

Although conditions in Sherborn Women's Prison are miserable, the inmates' spirits soar when the new chaplain decides to stage a musical: Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance. The show transforms the women, and no one is changed more than 16-year-old Libby Dodge, who discovers she's a natural performer. But Libby is still bound by her prison sentence and shadowed by her murky past. Gilbert and Sullivan may make prison life more bearable, but can musical theater set her free?