A competitive figure skater spent nearly two years in New York jails and prisons after a heroin arrest. Keri Blakinger tells how she got there, and what she did after.

Readical Key Points

• Memoir of addiction, incarceration and recovery by a criminal justice reporter
• Follows the author from competitive skating through years of addiction, an arrest during her senior year at Cornell, time behind bars and a career in journalism
• Reviewed in Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, BookPage and Booklist
• Content note: drug use, addiction, homelessness, sex work and incarceration, told as the author's own account
• Paperback, 336 pages (St. Martin's Griffin, 2023)

The memoir opens with a childhood organized around the rink and the collapse of her skating career, then follows the years Blakinger spent on the streets and using drugs while still trying to finish her degree. It goes with her into the New York jail and prison system, among the women she served time with, and closes on her move into reporting and the view of the justice system her time inside gave her.

This is the paperback edition. It suits readers of addiction and recovery memoirs, readers following criminal justice reform, and anyone who knows Blakinger's reporting. The publisher notes flashes of humor alongside the candor. She went back into the system she had left, this time carrying a notebook.

About the Author

Keri Blakinger is a journalist who covers criminal justice. She has reported for the Los Angeles Times, The Marshall Project and the Houston Chronicle, and was part of the Chronicle's 2018 Pulitzer finalist team. Her 2019 reporting on women's jails for The Washington Post Magazine helped win a National Magazine Award. She served her sentence in New York before turning to journalism.

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