I enjoy history, my major is in history so reading history books is basically half of my life. What I don't enjoy about history is that somehow many history writers can take a fascinating portion of history and make it boring. Listing facts, dates, names, and places like history isn't something that is exciting, nerve-wracking, bittersweet, heartbreaking, and angering all at once. I'm happy to say that this book has none of those issues. Stone has written an engrossing story about a little-known portion of American history that honestly keeps you interested from beginning to end.
In the '50s a Plastic Surgeon, a Judge, and some college students stumbled upon an interesting thing in terms of convict rehabilitation; simply changing how a convict looks through plastic surgery may reduce recidivism rates. Maybe not a lot but enough that it's worth looking into. So they embark on a year-long study to find out just how effective this may be. It's hard enough to convince people that convicts deserve a second chance but during a time when racism is rampant this unlikely group faces all sorts of issues from funding, to the racism that their patients face, to getting the convicts to actually trust them, to one of their own eventually disavowing everything they worked for.
The way that Stone tells this story is exactly like it is a story. Yes, she includes facts but they are woven into the story of these little-known historical characters who honestly set out with their hearts in the right place. And it really is about these five or so men and women who really believed in prison reform. And I have to say that Judge Anna Kross is one of my new heroes and I had never even heard about her until I read this book.
Stone also does an exceptional job of keeping the emotion in this without letting her emotions seep through, which I think is a hard thing for anyone writing non-fiction to do. Non-fiction books (in my opinion) should always allow the reader to come to their own conclusions based on the evidence presented and Stone does a wonderful job of that. At no point did I feel like the author was trying to sway me in one direction or the other.
What I found incredibly interesting about this though is just how progressive many of these people were at a time in history we do not usually associate with forward-thinking. Not just with the use of plastic surgery in the hopes of reducing recidivism rates but in all sorts of programs that Judge Anna Kross had been looking into at the time. While this book centers around the plastic surgery aspect I learned about many valuable programs including the Stay 'N Out Program that quite frankly we could use NOW with the current opiate epidemic. This one portion of history touches so many facets of prison reform that I simply never knew about that I actually took notes and I know for many of you annotating books is a huge thing but unless it's for a class I can't do it, but I found it so important to look into some of these programs and the people that started them I have a stack of notes of programs and people I'd like to research more.
Overall this was one of the best non-fiction books I have read in a very long time. Informative while keeping me not just interested but engrossed in the story. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys American history. Especially those hidden little facets that unless you look for them you'd probably never even know they existed.
I want to thank Zara Stone so much for the copy of her book in exchange for this review. It was an absolute pleasure to read.
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