Names Like Prayers

Two hundred twenty-one inmates dead in seventy-two hours. The official story: gang violence. The truth: systematic witness elimination.

When Black Hollow Correctional Facility seals shut, 314 federal witnesses face a brutal experiment. Guards distribute blessed knives while Governor Holt preaches about separating wheat from chaff. What follows isn't rehabilitation-it's choreographed murder designed to silence those who know too much about Tennessee's prison corruption.

Three voices refuse to let the dead stay buried:

Desmond Rios infiltrates the system to finish the investigation that got his brother killed, hunting evidence that reaches the highest levels of state government.

Evelyn "Mama E" Washington survived by turning the prison library into sanctuary, where rival gang members became family. She carries 221 names like prayers-each one a child who chose love over hate.

Dr. Elena Volkova, the scientist who justified the killings, now haunts herself with memories of teenagers dying to protect their enemies.

As congressional hearings expose the conspiracy, a darker pattern emerges: private prison profits depend on broken people staying broken. When rehabilitation threatens the bottom line, witnesses become liabilities.

But in those seventy-two hours, something unexpected happened. A diabetic Crip shared his last insulin with an elderly Nazi. White supremacists died protecting Black inmates. Gang enemies became chosen family.

They proved love is stronger than hate-even when choosing love means death.

Based on correspondence with incarcerated writers, Names Like Prayers asks: What do we do with troublemakers? The answer depends on whether we mean the kids who break rules-or the adults who write them.

A searing indictment of the prison-industrial complex wrapped in a thriller that refuses to let the dead stay buried.

Gene Scott grew up on a tenant farm in western Illinois, where stories around the kitchen table blended magical realism with the harsh realities of hog farming, abandoned strip mines, and hot nuclear waste dumps.Four decades in East Tennessee have opened his eyes to the audacity of nature and its ability to heal the broken-both physically and spiritually.A prison ministry-and letters exchanged with inmates reinventing themselves through Christian service and creative writing-led to this novel.